Finally, my last Spring to Finish finish!
Two years ago my quilt guild had a batik charm square exchange, and I was *all* over that! I had fun cutting out my batiks, but then had a bunch of left-over scraps – a lot of them 5″ crooked strips from the ends of rows.
My batiks looked great together, so I decided right then and there to make a quilt top out of all my scraps. I knew it wouldn’t be big, but figured a doll quilt for my girls was great. I’ve seen all these “improv” blocks and decided to just go with the crookedness of the scraps. And I love it!
The quilt is made entirely of scraps, except for the backing fabric:
I did the quilting on it this past August as practice for this spiral quilt. I was trying to determine what threads and what design to use on the spiral quilt, and this was the perfect quilt on which to test! Here you can see the beautiful swirlies that I ended up doing on the spiral quilt (and you can see when looking at this whole quilt how they definitely weren’t that good to begin with, but did improve!). And for the pink squares and border I did a straight-line spiky design:
I don’t think I’ll use that thread – Superior Rainbows – in both the bobbin and top thread again. Or at least try a differnt needle – I’ve heard I might have needed a Top Stitch needle. At any rate, it was painful. But I did use it in just the bobbin in the spiral quilt and it behaved.
The binding took me forever to get off my butt and do because it also needed to be made of the leftovers AND I wanted to make it change colors at the color transitions in the quilt. I’d never been so fussy with a binding and was avoiding it. But it looks great done!
And although my girls would love to take this quilt as their own, I’m hanging it right next to my sewing table in my sewing/guest/weight room because it makes me happy. In the meantime, they did get a moment to happily play with the ‘woogie!’
OH, thinking of naming it Fire and Water, but not really sold on that name. Any other ideas???
And what happened to the batik charm squares that started this whole thing? Um, they’re still a UFO. I still need to figure out what to do with them. (Taking ideas!) But aren’t they pretty?
Filed under: Quilting |
I'm nanann! I am a 30-something mom to 2 beautiful girls (6 and 4) living in Austin, Texas. I LOVE quilting and have recently taken up sewing clothes since it is just too much fun to do for my girls. This blog is a little bit about my quilting (or making of “woogies” as they’re known in my household) and other crafts, and a little bit about my two girls.
Nanann's Woogies & Whatnots 
I love it! I definitely agree that the binding came out great – worth the extra time I think. Alternative name: Sunsets and Rain?
Thanks! Sunsets and Rain is a pretty good idea! I was just brainstorming in the shower and came up with “A Summer Day at the Pool” or “Sunshine and Swimming Pools.” Definitely *not* going to be Fire and Water the more I think about it.
thinking some more — I think if I make it Sunsets and Rain I would need to turn it in the other direction, so the “sun” is horizontal and the “rain” vertical instead of vice versa. Hmmm….
Cool quilt! I must get some more batiks in my stash! I love the way you’ve quilted it, too.