Another Flimsie and a Finish!

    An acronym for STASH was recently shared on stashbusters. Special Treasures All Secretly Hidden. How delightful and endearing! I feel like posting this on a sign in my sewing room but then it wouldn't be a secret anymore so we will just keep it to ourselves.

My Attempt with the Jelly Roll 1600

     I've still been working on diminishing the juvenile prints stash. I thought the perfect project that would not generate more scraps is the Jelly Roll 1600. (Google for many tutorials) And what a wonderful  project to blow out the carbon in your old sewing machine you have in storage. I have several machines and it is good to get them out and use them on the occasion such as this. My workhorse, and beloved Bernina 830, never missed a stitch allthough I did have to stop and rewind 2 bobbins for her.

     So I just cut up what juvenile scraps I had left into 2.5 strips. Some of the strips were not 42", so I used 65 strips (instead of the required 40). This little technique of sewing these long strips together was really fun to see how things would match up. The only problem was that I had to stop at the size of 65" x 82" (see picture at right). If I cut it into one more half it would finish at 41" x 130" and what would I do with that? And I really did not care for the vertical stripes...

     Thinking this through I came up with the idea to cut them into 11" strips, and add 4" panels between.  These 11" sections were not quite long enough so with the remaining strips I had, I added 9 more rows to each section making them 83" long. I then added 4" borders and am now considering this one DONE at 64" x 91"! Much better, don't you think?  

     I STILL have some remaining scraps left but have boxed them away for a while. Enough with these brights already! Maybe in a year or two I'll drag them out again. Once the backing fabric comes in for these last three kiddie quilts, I'll be taking these to the machine quilter to finish. 

    



Maple Leaf Quilt

     My Maple Leaf quilt is bound and finished! I have really come to love this quilt as it grew closer to completion. 

     This quilt finished a nice size, 96" x 108", is alternated with plain blocks and set on the diagonal. The delay was in finding the right fabric for the border triangles. I am pleased with the results and will lay her on the bed soon after "show and tell" at our next Material Girls meeting.   

     I may have to post the question on the yahoo group about the quality of the older vintage calicoes from the 70's and 80's which is how old these blocks are. Remember the older VIP Cranston Prints? Some of these prints are very thin and I wonder how they will wear through time. There is an upcoming web seminar, Modern Materials: Quilts of the 1970's  which sounds very interesting.  Perhaps there will be some insight there.

     
     I used leftover yardage for the backing piecing two strips of muslin on each side. Now to sew on the label and mark this as my first finish for 2015!


     So it is the end of February 2015, and I have 3 flimsies and one completely finished quilt. And I will definitely be revisiting this Jelly Roll 1600 again! It really is a fun quilt that only takes a few hours to complete.