Made up this market bag this morning in about 5 hours.
I needed a quick project that was finished in less than a day. It was a kit that I ordered online from Connecting Threads. The green and purple at the bottom are pockets, and the handle is two toned. It's completely lined, but I skipped over the step that said to add batting and quilt it... It's just a market bag, no need for all that extra work... It's a nice size, but if I make it again, I'm going to shorten the handles a bit.
Now, back to my quilts in progress...
My new dilemma is how to put words in the border of the I Spy quilt, so that there are specific things to look for in all the pictures... After much internal debate, and some trial and error, this is what I've come up with for a design:
There are 3 blocks shown here, each measures the same as the blocks in the quilt. I want to make enough of these for the two sides and the bottom of the quilt. Along the top, I'm thinking a solid purple with the words "I spy with my little eye" appliqued onto it.
The words are written on leftover white fabric with a fabric marker. The purples have all come out of my scrap bin, and my fingers are crossed that I will have enough to finish all the blocks I need.
Last night I started another new project (like I don't have enough fabric projects on the go at the moment). But I justified it by saying that this one doesn't need a sewing machine, or even a sewing room. It's hand pieced and I can do it on the couch watching tv or in the car when I'm not the one driving, and it'll help use up my scraps, and it all fits into a shoe box.
This is the first finished block of my Grandmother's Flower Garden. About halfway through, I decided I didn't like how the stitches were showing with the traditional directions, so I looked online and changed my way of sewing the pieces together by following these instructions. I had cut out 400 2-1/2" scrap squares (8 identical bags of 50) for my quilt guild's scrap exchange, but then couldn't attend the meeting to do the exchange, so those are the fabrics I'm using to make these blocks. This project will be a long time in the making, I'm sure, a little at a time, but it will help to keep my hands busy in the summertime when it is too hot to knit or crochet.
Wow, time has gotten away from me, apparently. I didn't realize that it's been over a month since I updated. I have no good excuse, really.
Here's what I've been doing to keep busy:
Playing with hubby's new camera, taking pics of the quilt I finally finished that has found itself at home on my bed. I've grown to love it.
I've been putting together these stack 'n whack blocks that have been in my scrap bin for at least 7 years. I don't know what I had in mind at the time when I cut them up, because the pattern is two sizes: crib or queen. There are enough diamonds to make 3 crib quilts but not enough for one queen; and now that I've sewn them all together, I find that I'm short about 6 sets of the background pink. Not sure if I can get more all these years later. So I've been playing around with different placements, and adding sashings and filler blocks...
These are fabrics that I had in my stash that I've just placed the blocks on top of, to get a feel for the different effects that the different colors make... No decision yet on what I'll do with the blocks, so it's on the back burner again for now.
I joined a local quilt guild on facebook, and at my first meeting we were supposed to do a "scrap vomit" exchange. We were to make up baggies of 50 squares of fabric at 2-1/2" each. I was so excited that I made up 8 bags! ... and reminisced about where I've used these fabrics, and how I enjoyed making I spy quilts back in the day...Alas, the meeting was cancelled due to the massive local flooding, so now my fabric sits in the car waiting for the next meeting... But in the meantime, I've thrown together another top:
The pattern alternates 5-1/2" finished blocks of I Spy fabrics with hourglass blocks. And I've come up with an idea for the border that will incorporate some "search parameters" for the game.
Left over white fabric cut into 1-1/2" strips and fabric markers. Not sure yet how I'm going to arrange them, but it'll all come together somehow...
