New Year's Day Quilt

 

I have another quilt finish!

I love mini quilts and have made a few.

I keep all my triangle trimmings from making binding and throw them in a glass jar.

While they're pretty, I have mini quilt intentions with them.

Mini quilts intrigue me.

They can be done quickly but they need more precision to make.

...and quite possibly more patience as well.

So New Year's Eve I decided to tackle one.

I started this around 6 PM with the intent to finish it that night.

(Enter copious amounts of laughter.)

By 8 PM I had it sewn together and ready to quilt.

It did not take that long as there were breaks taken while sewing.

Anyways... my mind was willing but the body reminded me that I'm no spring chicken.

Plus I wanted to do some research on binding a mini quilt.

So I finished the next day.

Nothing like starting a new year with a quilt finish on day one!

It is made entirely of scraps, including the batting.

The backside.

The binding is not wonky by the label. The shadows are playing tricks.

I plan on taking this mini to work and hang it on my cubicle wall.

I'd like to fill my wall with these. That would be cool!

New Year's Day mini quilt

#42

6" x 7 1/4"

machine pieced and quilted

Village Quilt

I have finally finished the Village Quilt!

I completed the top back in 2018.

Then it sat on the back burner for several years so I could make some graduation quilts.

I decided that 2021 would be the best year to get this one done before I had another round of graduation quilts to make.

I made myself a goal and got to quilting.

The closer I got to my self-imposed goal I realized I might not make it.

It just so happened that one of the quilt bloggers I follow had created a challenge to get stuff done.

The challenge was to use the last 100 days of the year to finish some unfinished projects.

I thought this is the perfect way to keep up with my goal.

And it was.

I finished hand quilting on Christmas Day.

That left me six days to get the binding done.

(WIPS: Work In Progress)

PS- All the blanks in the "S" were from when I had Covid. I worked from home everyday, except one, while I was sick. I used all my energy for work and was too wiped out to quilt that week.)

There's this unspoken "rule" that you're supposed to hand sew the binding to the backside of a quilt. It's traditional and I get that. However, since the beginning of my quilting adventure I learned how to sew it by machine. It's much faster. So that is how I do almost all of my quilts. 

I can confidently conquer corners now.

:)

 I chose an old world map fabric for the back.

I learn a lesson (or several) with each quilt.

One of those hard lessons was this backing fabric.

I measured and purchased what I needed, or so I thought.

Upon cutting the fabric I realized I didn't have enough because I failed to remember that it is a directional fabric. Meaning it has to face a certain direction as opposed to any which way.

That makes a difference in how much fabric you need.

So this really cool looking fabric is sideways on the back...and I still didn't have enough.

To make it work and not have to purchase more fabric (and wait for it to arrive) I needed to turn the fabric sideways. Not my first choice...

Even with that change I still had to add a strip to make it fit the back.

Pride swallowed.

Lesson learned.

This is one of my favorite quilts.

Except for the outermost border, binding & backing, it is all scraps.

I had so much fun making this.

A lot of the fabrics came from the remnants of my first 40 quilts.

This is quilt number 41!

Lots of memories sewn into this one.

Some of the many crazy houses.

This was way out of my comfort zone. It was also my first true scrap quilt.

It was a lot of fun and by the time I finished I loved it!

This duck (there are several like him) is one of my favorites.

He standing all puffed up like our drakes do at times.

This house cracks me up. The egg fabric is upside down from all the others.

Which is funny because that's how you're supposed to store eggs in a carton.

Point side down.

I decided to keep the "mistake".

Another of my mistakes. I decided to leave it.

It's fun to look for it.

There is also a dog that's wrong side out.

I haven't found it since I finished the quilt.

;)

Village Quilt

#41

84 3/4" x 81 1/2"

machine pieced & hand quilted

Hand Quilting stats:

quilted 125 days (6/27 - 12/25)

136 1/4 hours