Two And Four Quiltalong: Cutting Directions

Have you got your scraps gathered? YAY! Let’s get going!

These directions are for a quilt finishing at approximately 60″ x 80″. Useful on a twin size bed, as a throw or couch quilt, or as a donation quilt. Or, you can make it exclusively because it is beautiful and makes you happy. That might be the best reason of all.

1. Divide your scraps into two piles: Colored and Background. My Colored is all red/blue. My Background is cream or coordinating low volume prints.

TIP: Generally, when cutting scraps, cut the largest piece you can/need first, then work down to smaller ones.

2. From the Colored fabrics, cut 160 2-1/2″x4-1/2″ rectangles. Also from the Colored fabrics, cut 280 2-1/2″x2-1/2″ squares. NOTE: It is nice to have some kind of color balance, but several possibilities will work. On Katy’s original quilt she cut all the rectangles from blue and all the squares from red. I am mixing my colors to match the fabric I had available. You can use more colors if you like.

3. From the Background fabrics, cut 160 2-1/2″x4-/2″ rectangles. Also from the Background fabrics, cut 280 2-1/2″x2-1/2″ squares.

4. Look at what you have accomplished and feel really great about it.

Thank you for quilting along with us. Visit Katy to see her progress on the quilt she is building. It is a similar size but uses larger pieces. Goodness, you might have enough scraps to do both! Now, that would be fun!

We’ll be back on September 7 with the first stitching step. Feel free to ask questions between now and then. See you soon!

FNSI Report

Between Friday morning, Friday night and a bit of a push Saturday morning, I got the quilt cut out.

And about 30 blocks finished.

It sounds more impressive than it is, only 5 pieces per block.

But they are cute and will make an interesting black-and-white quilt.

A Vintage Rescue

Sparkle Jane spotted it, wadded up in a pillowcase in a scrap bag. It sort of appeared at her shop, snuck in and left without a word. Many mysteries…

And she brought it to me. “Mom, you can do something with this.”

Well, I can try, but what is it?

It appeared to be a fairly large vintage flimsy that had most likely been washed. It was so tangled I couldn’t even flatten it out enough to see what it was.

So it sat for a while. But, while I was home with Covid, it became interesting. What is it really?

I started from a corner on the back. Trimming threads and fixing any popped seams that came up. By the time I was done (the picture is EARLY in the process) it looked like a fairly large long haired cat had taken up residence on the cutting table.

It was STILL too rough to really see, so I turned it over and started pressing. And pressing. And pressing. More than 2 hours of pressing

Sort of flat…

To the quilter. Who did an amazing job. A thick batting helped to absorb the waves in the blocks. SO much stitch-in-the-ditch. So much detail.

Finished

And now, it is the centerpiece of the guest bedroom. I look in every time I pass and feel great happiness that it is finally finished. I wish I knew who the original maker was. I would take it back to her and show her that her work was not wasted.

How old is it? There is no polyester in the top as far as I can tell. There is some original feedsack material. 1950s or maybe 1960s…

A Good Scrappy Start

These jelly roll leftovers came in a scrap bag. After the last batch, I vowed to take some process pictures of making a quilt with the leftovers.

This will be another coin quilt. Can you see it?

A Block Pile

While I was home with Covid, I also wasn’t sleeping as much as I might have hoped (at least at night). I needed something to do.

I had wanted to try THIS idea from Cluck Cluck Sew.

And now I have a big pile of blocks.

Layout coming next!

A Seussical Finish

Thank you again to those who contributed fabric for this finish.

It is bright and quirky, just as a Dr. Seuss quilt should be.

I like it back and front.

It will be in the mail soon, heading for Germany and the daughter of our first exchange student, Anna, and her husband, Basti. May it bring them happiness!

Sweet Scrappy Saturday

Sparkle Jane (Daughter) has started a scrappy sewing group that meets at her shop once a month and makes items for donation.

The favorite project these days is the Welcome Home blocks (tutorial coming sometime soon) that are assembled to make large couch or twin sized quilts (60″ x 80″).

Sparkle Jane herself did the assembly work on my “new” Featherweight. It sews straight and true.

And in the end we had one completed top and only 6 blocks short of second. YAY! Next day scheduled for November 21.

Blue Progress

With school starting and all the craziness that means this year in particular, my sewing time is…much less. But, I have made a little progress on the blue quilt.

And this is how I keep my blocks, especially large ones, flat while I keep piecing. I guess it is a good thing my sewing space is in the laundry room.

Sparkle Jane String Quilt

Sparkle Jane (Daughter) wanted to try out a new technique–foundation string piecing.

She using the tan as a constant diagonal line in the blocks, adding random strips of controlled scrappy colors as she went along.

Narrow sashing between the blocks finished it off.

She enjoyed the technique, but didn’t love the colors.  But, it was worth finishing, and it is finished, and that (as we all know) is good.

Black And Bright Top Complete

It started as a color experiment.  My black and white scraps were overflowing, as were the solids.

Not a bad combination.

It seems a little too much like other designs I have done recently, but I ran out of scraps before it could go further.

The binding will be scrappy solids to mirror those pieces in the quilt.  I hope to quilt it in the next few weeks and we’ll see how it looks as a finished piece.

68″ square.  Not very big, but as big as I could go with what I had. And that is OK.  Nice couch quilt size.