Giveaway winners

Thank you all for your kind comments on my previous post.  I randomly picked two winners from everyone who left a comment.  “aschaefer” and Kathy L, I emailed you the pattern you preferred (both of you chose the Geese!) and I’ll send the fat quarters along once you email me your mailing addresses.

I was curious to see which of the two patterns I offered was most popular so I tallied up the choices.  Five readers had no preference, 14 preferred Stretch and 15 chose Geese Across the Table.  That works out pretty close to even!

Milestones giveaways

Late last week sales of my Wandering Geese pattern topped 100!  Yay!    I started thinking about having a giveaway to mark the occasion.

On Friday, free downloads of my Scattered Leaves pattern shot up from 1 or 2 most days to 400 on a single day.  Downloads were lighter but steady on Saturday, then Sunday happened: 2077 downloads that day!

 

I was pleased (understatement).  Someone who will remain nameless asked if perhaps there was a computer glitch.  No, it was not a computer glitch! It turns out that the quilt was featured in not one but two Craftsy blog posts last week, which directed a lot of traffic to my pattern.  I’m quite flattered and giddy at the moment and decided the attention Scattered Leaves has just received warrants a giveaway too.

 

 

Here’s what I came up with. I have two sets of 7 fat quarters to send to new homes. I thought orange and black would be a nice Halloween touch coming up to the month of October.  As for the blues, well, you know I have a weakness for those.

Whoever wins them can add them to their stash, or use them to make my  Stretch  runner or Geese Across the Table placemats and runner.  Stretch uses 6 FQs and a bit of yardage, and Geese Across the Table uses 7 FQs and some yardage.

Leave me a comment for a chance to win, and tell me which of these two patterns you would like me to send you if you win.  Next Sunday evening, September 29th, I will randomly draw two winners from those who left comments. Remember that if you are a “no-reply” or anonymous commenter I won’t be able to reach you and will have to draw another name.

Now I’m off to do another happy dance!

The “quilt from nothing”?

My hundred-patch quilt top is finished!  The photos aren’t great because there isn’t anyone else home right now to draft as a quilt rack. I tried using the deck railing but the wind kept blowing the quilt to the ground.  Since I lack patience and want to share right now I settled for a patch of floor with so-so lighting but I managed to take pictures.

The top measures 59” x 73”, a generous throw size.  The 1200  1” finished scrap squares are fabrics from most if not all of the quilts I have made since I started quilting 13 years ago.  These were a by-product of my mad cutting down of scraps in the past year. I cut scraps into squares and rectangles and strips, but then took the scraps from that and cut smaller ones.  I think I’ll name the quilt “Quilter’s Scrapbook” since it’s a reminder of all those previous projects.

  

 

At one point I looked at those 1 1/2” squares and wondered what I was thinking, keeping such small bits.  I almost threw them out but then I saw a 144-patch quilt with wide sashing somewhere online and thought I could do that.  A little later I saw a sampler quilt set with a Garden Maze sashing (again, I don’t know where!) and thought that would dress up the scrap quilt a bit.  I played around with different widths and kept sewing together little squares and felt quite smug about making a quilt from ”nothing”.  By the time I had 12 blocks assembled I had decided to dress up the border too.

Now that it is together, I can no longer feel quite as smug about the “quilt from nothing”.  I may have started out to make a quilt with found bits, but I definitely needed some new yardage for all the sashing and borders!

That explains it

When I cut the fabric for my hundred-patch quilt’s sashing and borders, I was just able to squeeze enough pieces out of the white yardage I bought.  I was puzzled. I had exactly 1/4 inch of fabric left over.  I had double checked my fabric requirement calculations and added 1/8 yard of fudge room when I bought the fabric.  How could I have come so close to being short?

While I was sewing border units yesterday I looked up at my sketch of the quilt on the bulletin board above my sewing machine and it struck me that there didn’t seem to be as many seams in that pieced border as I had sewn so far.  Hmmm.

I flipped back through my planning book.  Apparently, between the time I figured out the yardage for each fabric, a task that sprawled over several well-scribbled pages, and the time I collected all the cutting instructions into one tidy table, the number 16 became 32. Twice. Instead of 32 long white strips I cut 64.  Since I cut the strips first, I’m lucky I squeezed out enough fabric for the pieces for the cornerstones!

Sashing

Adding white frames to all the 100-patch blocks, paper piecing 20 cornerstones and assembling 31 striped sashing units kept me busy the last couple of days.

Today I finally saw it all come together.  It looks better in person.  In the photo the red sashing overpowers the yellow sashing and seems to bulge out.  In person the two are better balanced.  I guess it’s a scale issue.

Maybe a closer view would show the balance more.

I still need to add borders.  There will be a 1” white border all around to float the center, followed by a medium width red border, then a pieced red and white border (like the sashing, but all white on a red background and a little wider) then a thin red border to finish it all off.  The quilt will measure about 59” x 73”.

Tonight will be either paper piecing X units or striped units for the pieced border, depending on how tired I am.  Right now I could go either way.  I’m excited to see this come together though so I might make a push to get more than less done.

Ready to sew

I really felt like sewing this week but since the machine was in the shop for maintenance my family put up with grumpy mom instead (sorry about that, family!)  Yesterday I was seized with the urge to cut up fabric.

Today the quilt shop called, a whole week earlier than I expected, to say my sewing machine was ready to come home.  Must be fate!

What you see above is going to turn into pieced sashing and a pieced border for these:

Guess what I’m going to be doing tonight?

Nothing fancy

This summer I daydreamed about getting a sewing cabinet, the kind my machine could drop down into so that the machine bed was level with the table top, and that was large enough to support a quilt to machine quilt.  It was just daydreams because that just isn’t in the budget any time soon.

A couple of weeks ago I got this instead.

It doesn’t have a spot for the machine to drop down, but it is just as large as the kitchen table I have been using when I machine quilt, so it will hold a quilt. It is sturdy and doesn’t wobble.  And I can cut fabric on it.  And I can press fabric on it using my table top pressing board (that white thing in the back). 

And it was FREE.  Can’t beat free!  My daughter, hubby and I just had to lug it on foot about 3 blocks from the curb where we found it with a “free” sign taped on.  We got few odd looks from folks driving by, and a few (OK, a lot of) moments of wondering how exactly I was going to make the thing fit in my space, but now I’m all set.

I am going to leave the sewing machine on the small desk unless I’m quilting a quilt and need the extra table space.  Most of the time I can keep this set up as a cutting and pressing table. It’s great not to be shuttling back and forth upstairs to the kitchen table to cut fabric, and to not have to clear everything away when the table is required for meals. I’m also looking forward to not cluttering up the dining area with my machine and supplies when I’m quilting a quilt over several days (or weeks!)

I figured out how I want to quilt that fall quilt on the wall and I was all set to move the machine over and get started when I realized the machine was overdue for its annual cleaning and maintenance at the shop.  Darn.  I really didn’t want to void the warranty, so I am now patiently waiting for the machine to come home again so I can test the table and get that quilt done!  I suppose now would be a good time to catch up on chores…