New Stashbuilder Fat Quarter Sets in Stock!

We got six new Stashbuilder Fat Quarter sets put together yesterday.  They include batiks from Anthology Fabrics, Michael Miller, Benartex and Island Batik.  Lots of color as well as some new black and white batiks and some black tone on tone batiks that we are now carrying.

You can find all of our fat quarter sets HERE.

Using up Batting Scraps

Do you save the pieces of batting that you trim off of quilts after they are quilted?  I do.  I don't like to waste anything and batting costs money just like everything else.  Using up the scraps on smaller quilts and projects just makes good fiscal sense in my opinion (that's the former accountant in me) and gives me more money to spend on new fabric.  Not that I need any new fabric, but that doesn't really matter, does it?  LOL

If you do save those scraps, then you probably find the pile growing faster than you can deplete it. Maybe you are like me and get in a rush so you just grab a new piece of batting rather than taking the time to piece together some of those scraps.  So they continue to pile up.  I keep mine in a large basket and also have a smaller basket where I keep narrower batting scraps that I use for making potholders, mug rugs and trivets out of orphan blocks.

The large basket was overflowing and I had a pile of small projects needing to be quilted, so today I have been using the batting from that basket for them, piecing them together as needed.  These orphan blocks are now basted and ready for quilting.

Can you see how I stitched two pieces of batting together for the large block?  Look about half way down and you will see the zig zag running horizontally.

It is super easy to piece batting.  First, I lay out the rough pieces that I need based on the size of the quilt backing.  Then I lay 2 pieces on top of each other that need to be stitched together.  I make a clean, straight cut along the side where they will meet.  Then I use a wide zig zag stitch with a longer stitch length to sew them together.

This batting for one of my small quilts is made up of 4 pieces sewn together.  I had one large piece, but it wasn't wide enough so I pieced together three smaller pieces to make another segment that was then sewn to the original large piece.  As long as you use a wide zig zag you shouldn't get bunching along the joining seam.  The 4 piece batting below is relatively flat in person.  I'm not sure why it looks so puffy in the picture.  I do a quick press with a hot iron which also helps keep the batting flat and the picture may have been before that final press.  PLEASE NOTE - I am using 100% cotton batting or mostly cotton batting in these examples.  Poly batting will need a much cooler iron or it will melt.

The quilt with the 4 piece batting isn't basted yet, but these two are and both battings are made up of scraps I pieced together.  If you look close, you can see that the pink and green quilt batting is made up of three pieces.  I do make sure that the join doesn't fall under a light section of the quilt like the very light sashing on this quilt.  After all of this basting, the basket is still overflowing, but at least it has gone down a bit!

Christmas in July!

I am continuing to plug along on old UFOs.  The boys are all at my in-laws farm this weekend doing some work for them so I have taken advantage of my time alone and have spent a lot of time in the quilting studio.  I have been itching to do some machine quilting as it's been well over a year since I've done any, so I dug out this Christmas 9 Patch quilt that was ready to go and got it all basted. 

I just wound a bunch of bobbins and will be getting started on the quilting shortly.  I'm going to do an overall grid pattern on it.  As an extra bonus, when I unfolded it I found that I had already made the binding for it, so I can get that attached as soon as the quilting is done.  Who knows, it might actually get done by Christmas!!!

Bloglovin - Claiming my Blog

As I'm sure you know by now, Google Reader is going away on July 1.  Many people, including myself, have switched to Bloglovin for reading our favorite blogs.  Apparently you have to "claim" your blog if you want to put a button on your blog for people to easily add your blog to their bloglovin reader.  So that is what this post is for.  You can click on the link below to add my blog or on the button on the sidebar.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Batik Postage Stamp Mini

I needed some mindless sewing the last few days so I dug out my baggie of pre-cut light colored batik squares and just started sewing them together.  After awhile I decided that they would make nice little mats for under our bedroom lamps so I sewed twelve rows of twelve squares together and here is the first finished mat.  Each square finishes at 1 inch.  No border to be added.  Just a little grid quilting and binding and it will be done.  I need to make one more for DH's lamp.  The backing and the binding will be this Princess Mirah batik that I have in the shop.  It is from the Temple Life collection.

Done!

I got the pieced border finished on this old UFO yesterday and the top is officially done!  I've pulled some fabrics from my stash to make a pieced backing so that is next on the quilting to do list.  It felt good to finally get some sewing time this weekend.  We also got the rest of the garden planted, a good long bike ride in once the rain finally stopped, and watched several movies from back in "our day" with the kids, which they enjoyed.  All in all, it was a great weekend at our house!

Scrappy Afghan Progress

We have spent the last 3 weekends traveling so I needed to have a good traveling project to work on in the car.  I only had one small quilt to bind and I wasn't in binding mode anyway, so I chose to bring the scrappy afghan I am crocheting.  Two of the trips were 5 hours each way so I was able to make quite a bit of progress when I didn't have a cat in my lap.  Sassy traveled with us for the first two trips so I didn't get as much done on those.

Here is my progress so far and a close-up of the variety of colors I am using.  Because of all of the color changes I have lots of yarn ends to weave in, which I don't care for at all, but it's worth it to get this awesome rainbow of color.  I am using my cotton yarn stash, much of which is no longer available since Peaches 'n Creme sold out to the Sugar 'n Cream guys, so having all of those discontinued colors in one afghan is pretty cool in my opinion.

As an extra bonus, I stumbled across a cute little quilt shop in Jamestown, ND this past weekend purely by accident as we were leaving the buffalo museum of all places.  We had 30 minutes until closing so perfect for a quick browse through the shop and to pick up a few small pieces to add to my stash.