Tag Archives: scrappy quilt

Waterfall Lap Quilt • 8 Comments

sarah • November 24, 2021

I'm super excited about my lated finished lap quilt. I love the palette and look forward to cuddling up on the couch with it.

Three years ago I started Amy Ellis's Waterfall Quilt. I really loved the wash of color over the quilt. She had made two monochromatic versions in blue and green. At the time I started, solids were quite minimal in my stash.

The majority of my stash is blenders, fabrics that read as a single color, so I focused on those prints. I started with my favorite palette: navy, turquoise, and lime green, and added from there. It was a challenge to pull all the lighter values for this project, but everything came together from my 2018 stash once I chose to add in the mustard yellows.

Part of the charm of this pattern is that there is a gradient of color or value with pops of other fabrics occurring throughout. My finished quilt is approximately 45" x 54", which I'd consider a one person lap quilt. :-)

I color blocked the back of the quilt with fabrics from my stash. I absolutely love the jellyfish print and was glad to use that fabric on a project that is staying in my house.

Hard to see here, but you can see my simply organic curvy quilting in the photo below, and the first photo at the top of this post. I really enjoy how this block-based quilt doesn't look like it's made up of blocks.

I finished with a scrappy machine binding, mostly from fabrics used on the quilt top.

Happy to finish this one up from my WIP list.

Planned Improv: Creative HSTs with Scrappy Slab • 6 Comments

sarah • December 15, 2020

I use the descriptor "planned improv" loosely. Sometimes the improv comes in the piecing. Sometimes it comes in the design work before piecing starts. In this case, the improv had to do with having no idea where I was going when I started piecing scraps together. And the plan was that HSTs would be involved, and I was working with a limited amount of scraps (at the beginning) with a limited color palette (that I'd curated for the bag of scraps).

This quilt has been a long time coming. The scraps that were the start of it predate February 2016 when I took Jeni Baker's Creative HST workshop at QuiltCon in Pasadena. (We won't discuss how these are scraps from another project that is not yet finished.) This three-hour evening class was a chance to play. I finished my first four blocks for this quilt that night and eventually went on to create 140 more!

As with many of my quilt projects, I worked on this one intermittently over the years. It had no deadline or destination. The quilt top was finally finished at a quilt retreat in September 2018. I mailed it away to be quilted (by Jess Zeigler) in December 2019. No rush on this one. ;-)

I finished the quilt with a faced binding in order to submit to it PIQF in October for their Online Quilt Festival.

It's 59" x 59". I plan to hang it in my entryway.

Unrelatedly, check out the new short film, Canvas, on Netflix.

Purple Scrappy Slab Cuddle Quilt For My Niece • 18 Comments

sarah • December 5, 2020

There's a sentiment about how a first child's experience is different than a second child's. (We could talk about how my 8 year old doesn't have a baby book yet.) Apparently the same goes for niece and nephew. Within a couple months of my nephew's birth, he had a baby quilt. However, my niece just received her "baby" quilt for her 2nd birthday.

I started out with a different plan for her. My nephew's quilt had been inspired by the mural in his room and I wanted to do the same for her. But her African safari wall left me feeling like I "should" do appliqué... and I don't particularly enjoy the process of appliqué. Eventually I pivoted to focusing on the main color of her room, purple, a favorite of mine. I have a lot of purple scraps and I have been building purple scrappy slabs to piece for Jillian's quilt for over two years!

In recent weeks (months?) the quilt top has been my backdrop while I'm on zoom. I love reminiscing about the previous purple projects these scraps have come from. (There's a section in the upper right that's from my Ultra Violet All About Angles quilt.)

I'm really deadline driven. As Gretchen Rubin says, "things that can be done any time are often done at no time." And that really resonates with me for quilts that don't have a deadline. A challenge or quilt show submission deadline is really motivating for me. Quilt alongs and 100 day projects help, too. But "I'm making this for someone" doesn't usually have a deadline. As we approached her 2nd birthday, I decided this needed to be my hard deadline. I could hardly still call this a "baby" quilt, but at least it is sizable enough to be a good cuddle quilt for years to come.

I opted for simple walking foot quilting in organic vertical and horizontal lines. I didn't concern myself with perfection or equal spacing.

Then I added a little free motion elephant as a nod to her room. (Shh. I also have an elephant quilt in progress for her.)

My binding is more scrappy fabric. I usually opt for a bias binding, but this one was straight grain pieces, since I wanted to use scraps. I attached the binding by machine.