Working the string blocks, baby quilt and more!

Every morning as soon as I get up, I work on my string quilt blocks.  I go straight to the coffee pot, make hot water for my tea and while that is brewing, I sew my 4 1/2 inch string blocks. I have a large supply of strips of various size widths, colors and patterns in a drawer next to my sewing machine. I pull out the strips, sew it onto a foundation paper made from my old phone book and keep repeating until I have 10 blocks sewn. I end the chain piecing with a foundation paper sized 2 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches.  It is from these little "feeder" blocks that I made my granddaughter's "baby doll" quilt.

I know that sounds very organized, but trust me its not!  Sometimes I run out of fabric strips and have to run to my scrap box and clean cut the scraps into various sized strips to put in my drawer next to the sewing machine. I have several plastic boxes full of these scraps. I am trying to justify keeping them or "hoarding" them, as my husband calls it. 

These are scraps left from years of cutting butterflies, cats, hexagons, triangles for my customers' orders.  There are all sizes and weird shaped pieces left.  But, if I cut just so, I can get several strips of different widths and many, many triangles of different sizes! I can't even begin to think of throwing all that fabric away! If that makes me a hoarder, so be it!

I have already made enough blocks to put together a quilt top from these scraps that you can see here Click Here   But, it was not big enough to drape over the side of my double bed.  So that's why I am sewing more blocks.  Plus, after I finish this one, I am making 2 more for my other kids. I think then maybe, I will have used all the scraps in the plastic boxes, LOL!!!

In the meantime, remember the "baby doll" quilt?  Well I finally decided, I am going to quilt it on the machine.  Even though I am not very experienced in machine quilting, I think I will manage with this one because it is so small. I will post a picture when I am done, maybe on Monday???

My hexagon quilt progress will be posted tomorrow!

Have a great time quilting!

Aveli

More Blocks! More Blocks!

 

As you can see above, I am still making blocks for my "Basket Weave" quilt. I have been working diligently for the past 4 days on finishing it.  I found out that it wasn't quite big enough to drape over my double bed. So back to making blocks again!

In the picture above you can see that I have been busy sewing and now comes the trimming down to the size of my foundation paper.  My foundation papers (local telephone book) measure 4 1/2" square. Of course you can make your foundation paper any size you want. But, my leftover scraps seem to best work at 4 1/2".

So once I finish trimming these blocks, I will start adding on to the quilt to make it larger, then I will add the border and finish it.  I am undecided whether to add a wine colored border and keep the quilt for my bedroom.  Or add a lavender border and give it to my daughter since she has been asking for a quilt for a long long time!  I will probably give it to her, LOL!

 

Back to Quilting!

Yesterday we drove to Albuquerque to take our grandson so he could go back to California. After several hours of waiting, he was off into the wild blue yonder!
His flight was delayed in taking off because of some mechanical difficulties.
After his plane took off, we drove back to Guadalupita.  On the way, just north of Las Vegas (New Mexico) we saw a lot of smoke.
The fire that is raging in Northern NM is pretty far from where we were but the smoke was everywhere because the winds were blowing out way.
Now that we have no guests, its time to get back to quilting.  So today, have been working on adding 7 more rows to the basket weave quilt that I have been sewing.
As you can see in the pic below, it barely goes over the side of my double bed.