Quilting, 15 Minutes at a Time

 

This is one of the houses that we saw during our tour I told you about last time last time. It is such a fun house, and I found an app that makes the photograph look painterly.

15 Minutes to Stitch Week 22

One of the posts I saw on Facebook was someone complaining about the state of a famous deceased quilter's studio. I scrolled on by and am hoping to avoid getting on the soapbox. I love that people can choose for themselves what amount of order they need in their own house. 

I don't know if I did any quilting this week, so I will mark this week as a 0. No cheating.

15 minute days this week --0 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 134 out of 155 days

Success rate  = 86%

 

15 Minutes to Stitch Week 22

My roses are still hanging on and smelling lovely. I puttered around this week, with cleaning in the sewing room, trimming Aunt Daisy blocks and cutting pressing and making parts of Spicy Stars and Unallocated blocks.

15 minute days this week --7 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 141 out of 162 days

Success rate  = 87%

15 Minutes to Stitch Week 23

 Again this week, I puttered around this week, with cleaning in the sewing room, and cutting pressing and making parts of Spicy Stars and Unallocated blocks. I've been working on the index cards.

15 minute days this week --3 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 148 out of 169 days

Success rate  = 87%

 
 

 

 

15 Minutes to Stitch Updates

This is a big recap of several weeks of stitching, or lack thereof. I interspersed some photographs I took during these weeks for interest. There was a walking historical tour the library was sponsoring, so most of the photos are from that day.

15 Minutes to Stitch Week 18

I tried to work on Spicy Stars blocks, but realized pretty quickly that I needed to do something simpler, so I worked on some Unallocated scrap blocks. All the blocks are the same, and since I am using scrap fabric, any fabric will work for the most part, there is very little decision making.

15 minute days this week --3 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 123 out of 127 days

Success rate  = 97%

15 Minutes to Stitch Week 19

I didn't find any time to quilt this week. I was behind in my housekeeping and mostly I wanted to rest, so I took advantage of my Prime trial subscription watching videos.

 

15 minute days this week --0 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 123 out of 134 days

Success rate  = 91%

15 Minutes to Stitch Week 20

 

I worked on more Unallocated blocks, but only managed one day.

15 minute days this week --1 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 124 out of 141 days

Success rate  = 88%

15 Minutes to Stitch Week 21

 

I found an even easier way to get some quilting in, which was to trim the Aunt Daisy blocks. They are all the same size, so trimming to that size was easy.

15 minute days this week --3 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 127 out of 148 days

Success rate  = 86%

 

 

 

Linked with:

 15 Minutes to Stitch

 

 

 

P. S. If you are interested in the one card a day, a new challenge is starting up.

 

More Progress on Boundless

 I started last week's post but decided to wait to get a picture, so here it is.

2023: 15 Minutes to Stitch Week 12

 Like last week, it was difficult to eek out time every day, but I managed to finish quilting and apply the machine binding on the Boundless quilt. I am now working on stitching the binding down to the back. I also spent a little time cutting fabric for Unallocated scrap quilt. I don't have much time to quilt, and need to get away from the computer so I can't spend much time with blog posts when I could be stitching.

15 minute days this week --7 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 84 out of 84 days

Success rate  = 100%

 

 

Linked with:

 15 Minutes to Stitch

 

This week was more exciting. Mary Fons showed my Zou the Elephant quilt on the Quilt Nerd Show. 

 

I finished the binding on Boundless quilt. Since it was made as a part of the Dust off An Old Quilt Book blog hop, I dusted off another book, and chose a design. The original plan was to embroider a design in the diamonds, redwork style

But when I opened the drawer to see if I had some freezer paper or press n seal, I found some fusible and I decided to use the leftover binding to add some applique instead. The design is exactly the size of the binding strip.

 

Zoey approves. There is plenty of white space to let the diamonds shine but adds that extra that gives the maximalist touch.

2023: 15 Minutes to Stitch Week 13

This week, I hand stitched down the binding on the Boundless quilt, chose a design and added applique to the diamonds.

15 minute days this week --7 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 91 out of 91 days

Success rate  = 100%

 

 

Linked with:

 15 Minutes to Stitch

 

 

 

I finished the Boundless quilt on April 1, 2023. I will show you the reveal as soon as I get some pictures.

Uses for Fabric Scraps

I wanted to show you a couple of things I have made recently to use the fabric and batting scraps I have.

 

These hearts are made from the leftover batting strips from  the last quilt I made, Zou. This is the trimmings from the quilt sandwich. I covered the rest of the batting from other scraps and sewed them down, then cut them into shapes and added the rickrack. Pinking shears add a nice decorative edge. They can be used to decorate a holiday tree or a banner, used as prayer flags ,or given out as gifts. There is also a Facebook group called I found a quilted heart, where people leave these types of hearts out as a say to brighten someone's day and people can post the ones they find.

The rest of the batting strips and fabric waste can be used to make these Scrappy Balls. Basically just roll them into balls and decorate. This one is made from scraps of quilts I made earlier this year. It isn't finished, and other people are able to make really cute ones. There is also a Facebook group called Scrappy Balls that show you the pretty decorations people have made. They make great bowl fillers, pin cushions, toys for dogs or children, etc.

 Over the last few years, I have been following the Konmari approach to decluttering. Touch everything and decide whether you want it to live in your home. I have a big house and I am going at a slow pace, one shelf, drawer or box at a time.  I saved the sewing supplies for last because I knew they would be difficult for me. I haven't finished with the basement, but I think I will feel better if I do the sewing space first because it will be more useful to me.

The last few weeks, I have been working in the upstairs sewing storage room, a few minutes at a time. 

Yesterday, I grabbed a small box of fabric scraps and started processing them.  Most of the scraps in this box were things other people would just have thrown away as trash. When I make projects like the ones I showed you earlier in the post, I make them right away. I don't usually keep trash in a box, but I think this box was meant to be trash that was supposed to be thrown away, but I wound up having some usable pieces in it too.

That's what I did with them too, just throw them away. I don't store little fabric or batting snippets because I know that I can get new ones whenever I want.  

I don't like to cut pieces into certain shapes for the future because I always wonder if I might need some other size. What if I need 5 3/8" instead of 5 1/4"?  So what I do is cut for specific scrap quilts. That way, I know that piece has a place to be, and I know exactly what size I need. It is best to cut for scrap quilts you already have in the works. Do as I say, not as I do.

 

Most of my scrap quilts in process are 1 1/2" pieces and I wanted something that uses bigger pieces. I came across this quilt pattern by Michelle Mckillop called Unallocated. When you put it on point, the light and the dark triangles form lines which looks really good to me. My quilt may not look like hers because I am letting the fabric scraps dictate where they will fit in the quilt based on their size, so although I will have a light and dark triangle per block, the side strips are not all mediums. Hopefully it will work out though. And again because of the size of the fabric, I am not using the same fabric to sash the block. I will try to make it the way she did as much as possible.

 

 

I realize this new project just took me farther from my goal, but the year is young.