A New Scrap Slab Quilt

 I've been sewing up the leftover pieces from the Nightingale quilts and making slabs out of them, then cutting triangles. I decided to make another one with the black triangles. The last black one I made (Black Abacus) my mother liked it so much she asked for it. I had wanted to keep that one, so now I will make myself one.

I've made eleven Scrap Slab Triangle Quilts and no two of them are alike. But I've never made one like this, that arranges the triangles into diamonds like a Harlequin design. So that's my plan.

Normally I try to separate triangles that look alike, but for this quilt, I decided to put them together, like this:

So if you look closely at the photo of all the diamonds on the design wall, you can see that I combined two triangles into diamonds that look like they were made that way - I have some orange ones, some green ones and at least one blue one.

I didn't get all worked up about it, but wherever I could, I made sure the diamonds looked like they were conceived that way.

It also meant that when I got something like this, above, with a big chunk of color at one end (that would "leak" out into the light background and not "read" as a dark triangle),

that I fixed it.

When I started adding the side triangles, I originally used side triangles that had some color in them, but that didn't really sing for me.

So I just decided to use black on white fabrics. Here I have sewn up four blocks, and I really really like this a lot.

I am sewing the blocks together. 

Oh, I finished that jigsaw puzzle.

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle Quilt. It is a GREAT way to use up your scraps. If you want to make one, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

His Quilt

 

The Black Abacus quilt is all finished. Here it is reclining on a park bench.

And here it is in its new home with its very proud owner.

Here is why you should use color catchers when you wash a quilt. Even though every piece of fabric I buy gets run through the washer (on warm water) and then the dryer before it ever gets into the studio, fabrics still shed excess dye. I washed the Black Abacus quilt twice! The color catchers from the first washing are on the left. The color catchers from the second are on the right. I actually washed the quilt a third time, and the color catchers from that one came out a medium gray. I could probably have washed the quilt two or three more times, but enough was enough. M is very happy with his quilt and had waited a long time for it.

I made the binding for the Stairway to Heaven quilt, and will sew that on next.

Binding for the Black Abacus Quilt

 

I am adding the binding to the Black Abacus quilt. 

Regular readers know I add my binding to the back of my quilts, then fold it over to the front and do my hand sewing on the front. I'm really good at invisible blind stitching, so doing it this way allows me to show off. (ROFLMAO!!) Actually, that is the way I was taught. I tell you everything about how I do it in my tutorial, available here.

This is a scrap slab triangle quilt. It's a great quilt to use up all your scraps. I've made about nine of them and each one is different. I wrote a tutorial for this, and you can get it here.

The Wrong Road

 

This is the inspiration wall above my ironing table. On it are favorite photos, thank you cards, birthday and Christmas cards; quotes, postcards of artwork I like and all kinds of other fun stuff.

There is also this. I keep it front and center to remind me that I am human.

The pink and white zebra flimsy is no more. I have taken it apart. Next up is to remove all the white triangles and then pivot and do something else. I think I know what it is, but I am not going to get ahead of myself. I still need some more time on the couch with the seam ripper. Fortunately there's plenty of good tennis to watch while I do that. 

I had been on the fence about it. What prompted me?

I dropped off three quilts to my longer quilter, Janet-Lee Santeusanio, yesterday, and picked up Black Abacus, above. 

I also brought this, and asked JL if it would be a problem for her if I used it on the backing of a quilt. She said it would not give her machines any trouble. Then I showed her the pink and white top. We both agreed it was lovely, but there was nothing special about it, and that if I backed it with THIS (above) who would want to look at the other side? (Not me.)

So I decided to take the mediocre flimsy apart and figure out something else. AND I decided to make another panel like the one above, join the two together, and have a terrific quilt.

Black Abacus

 

I named the quilt. It is called "Black Abacus" and that's me with it, above. I was trying to get a crumpled picture for Julie because she thinks quilts show off best when they are crumpled. I am not totally convinced, but she's right far more than she is wrong, and she's my best bud, so she can have this point.

I ordered the backing for this quilt before started sewing it together, which is always dangerous (for me, anyway) but it looks OK, so I'm sticking with it.

I don't usually brag, but here is where I make an exception. This is the wrong side of one corner of the Black Abacus flimsy.

And yes, the whole quilt looks like this. Threads trimmed, all seams pressed flat.

When you trim your threads, press your seams and square your blocks before you sew them together, then you get this, a quilt that lies flat as a pancake. No wrinkles, no ripples.

Your long arm quilter will love you.

And you (and I) deserve bragging rights.

MY NEXT PROJECT...

Will involve words, and writing. (And probably lots of cursing on my part). I am going to rewrite my Making Your Fabric Work For You tutorial. I have a lot I want to say, and I'm not sure about anything  yet, except that I want to expand on my belief that the success or failure of any quilt depends (all other things being equal) on the fabric selection. I believe that the answers are in the fabrics. I just happen to think some of you aren't listening to what your fabrics are saying. So I guess I am going to (try) to tell you how to figure that out.

And I'm gonna finish the student birds quilts. 

Finito!

 

I added a narrow border around the edges of the quilt. I used eight of the light fabrics that were already in the quilt. I arranged them quiet, busy, quiet, busy... I added strips 1-1/2" wide and I joined them at a 45 degree angle.

I needed eight and a half WOF strips of the dark fabrics for the border. This was a bit harder because the black fabrics were all scraps from my stash and I didn't have yardage of most of them. If you look at these strips, one of them doesn't fit - the one with the glasses and olives with the straight white lines - so I didn't use it. The same rule applied here - the dark fabrics had to be used in the quilt. 

 

I cut these strips 2-1/2" wide by about about 18-20: long, sewed them into one strip by joining the strips at a 45 degree angle, and then sewed them to the quilt.

So here it is - all finished. The quilt measures about 65" x 78" or so. I left this picture enormous so you can click it and then click it again, so you can really see the fabrics working together here.

This is a scrap slab triangle quilt. If you want to make one you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. 

PS, the quilt needs a name. Suggestions welcome.

 

Almost...

 

I have sewn the last quarter of the quilts together, and then sewed the bottom two quarters together so now all I need is to sew the two halves together and the flimsy will be complete.

Almost.

I think I want this quilt to have a dark border, and I like it, but it will need a smaller light border first so the triangles on the edge of the quilt at the top and bottom don't look like they are stuck to that border.

The borders won't be as you see them now. As usual, I will cut the dark fabrics into strips about 20" or so long, and arrange them randomly. I'll do the same for the lighter border in between.

I already have the backing fabric for this, so I will leave it for quilting with Janet-Lee Santeusanio when I visit her at the end of this month.

I'm re-reading The Emerald Mile. I'm finding it every bit as thrilling the second time around as it was the first.

Fourth Quarter

 

This is the fourth quarter of the black and white scrap slab triangle quilt. The blocks are sewn into rows, but the rows haven't been sewn together yet. That ought to happen this weekend. 

Here is the whole thing on my design wall. It's funny to think that 7 seams will be all it takes to finish it. It will probably get a border, but I don't know whether it will be black or white yet.

What I can tell you is that I really like what I did with the light fabrics - making the white shapes irregular and interesting, and making the basic block disappear. I'm always impressed with all the different ways this quilt can go together. You can see my other Scrap Slab Triangle quilts here.

 

I've been reading. I discovered the Bruno,Chief of Police books by Martin Walker a few years ago and have been slowly working my way through them. I've been trying to space them out to prolong my enjoyment of them. The newest one has just been released. I just finished the penultimate book, so I'll wait a bit before I get into the newest one.

Three Quarters

 

Woo hoo! I've got 3/4 of the black scrap slab triangle quilt done.

I'm working on the last set of blocks, enjoying the tennis in Montreal.

20 More Blocks

 I

 

I've got four more half rows sewn up. But I got a little distracted.

This is one of two cat-themed pot holders I have. When I put up the blue wallpaper in my kitchen (and I have it on order) it won't "match." 

Now you all know I am not matchy-matchy, but I'd like them to coordinate. So I went into the studio and found some coordinating fabrics. The blues were not particularly exciting.

So I picked out this yellow with some blue accents.

It sure is nice to have mad sewing skills, lots of fabric, and tools. I also have a stash of Insul-brite, the filling designed for making potholders or something that gets hot (because let me tell you, using the average quilt batting in a pot holder is NOT going to protect your hands from the heat). In fact, for the business side of this pot holder, I used TWO layers of Insul-brite.

So here's the first one. A blue will will hang with it before the weekend is out.

I have been busy in the kitchen. I have completely reorganized this part of my pantry.  Everything is labelled. (I confess I may have watched one too many episodes of The Home Edit.)

If you think this was more than just a little bit compulsive, let me show you what ONE of these shelves looked like just a few weeks ago.

Can I tell you how blissful it is to work in my kitchen now?

Half

 

I sewed up the second quarter of the black and white scrap slab triangle quilt. Although when I add the side white triangles I press them to the side, when I sew the blocks and rows I have been pressing the seams open.

 Here's the top half of the quilt. I am enjoying being back in the studio.

A Quarter

 

Here is the top left quarter of the quilt, all sewn together.

Here is the finished quarter next to the rest of it. I like this a lot.

This is a scrap slab triangle quilt. You can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop,

Twenty

 

I've started sewing the black and white scrap slabs quilt together. Since none of the blocks are sewn together, I start by sewing one white side triangle to a black triangle. I keep the blocks in order while I sew and then press. Then I sew the second side triangle, and then sew the blocks together. 

I started at the top, and since each row is so wide I'd have to move the step ladder back and forth, I decided to sew half a row at a time. This is a completed row, above. I counted all the different fabrics in one of these five block rows (actually when they get to be multi block size, I call them "panels.") and there were 28 different fabrics. I can't even imagine how many different fabrics will be in the whole quilt. But hey, it's a scrap quilt!

Here are the first four rows of five blocks across. The blocks are sewn to each other, but only the two two rows are sewn together.

I am really happy with the way it is turning out. One of the things I wanted was to make the individual block shapes disappear. I'm doing that by placing similar light fabrics next to each other so they almost appear the same, which blurs the edges of the individual blocks. I also throw in a curve ball or two (as usual). In this example it is the white triangle in the bottom row. Instead of two side triangles, this is a full triangle.

This is one energetic quilt (some would call it "busy") but that is what I think is exciting about it. It's got a lot of color, and it's happy.

Works for me!

This is a scrap slab triangle quilt. It's built from scraps. I think it's wicked easy to do, but every time I say that my son rolls his eyes. "BUT MOM...." he says, "you're so good that everything IS easy for you." In this case, he's wrong. This is an easy quilt. You have to pay attention to cutting your blocks and sewing your seams, but hey, what else is new? At any rate, if you want to make a scrap slab triangle quilt you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. You'll need the Tri-Recs ruler set, which you can get at any LQS or Amazon. And scraps. You'll need those, but I'm guessing you do.  Enjoy.

Black & White & Tribal

 

I've been spending time with the black and white scrap slab triangles quilt in the studio. I'm pretty happy with most of it. As you can see I have to fill in at the bottom. But the top part is mostly done and I will in all likelihood sew it together as it is. Hopefully that will start happening this weekend.

I've left this photo pretty big so you can click and click again to enlarge it so you can see all the fabrics that are in it.

This is a scrap slab triangle quilt, and you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's a heck of a flexible design. There are lots of different things you can do with it, and it's great for using up scraps.

For whoever asked the other day, the wallpaper for the kitchen came from Home Depot, and yes, it is peel and stick.

Fussy Fussy Fussy

 I know you won't believe me, but I really don't have any idea where half my quilts are going when I start designing them. I have a GENERAL idea (this one is scrap slab triangles made from fabrics that have a lot of color on a black background), but I don't know any specifics until I really see what's happening when I stick all those blocks together. 

So the black triangles are up on the design wall, and now I am adding the side triangles of colored fabrics on white or cream backgrounds. And sometimes they are black on white with colors and basically whatever else I think looks good. 

 

Once I got going, I noticed something I liked - when two different fabrics sitting next to each other looked like they were one piece of fabric. You can see some of it in the photo above, but let me show you exactly what I mean.

In this quilt, one block is a black(ish) triangle with a lighter side triangle on each side, so the block makes a square, like in the photo above.

Backing up a bit, we see that the side triangles sit next to other light side triangles for the adjacent blocks. Here I have deliberately placed fabrics that emphasize that square block-y feel. But what if I DIDN'T do that? What if I made the pairs of side triangles that sit next to each other look like they belonged together? I don't want to make them the same, but I want the viewer to not notice they are different fabrics...

Kinda like this. Here are six pairs of light triangles arranged so you think they are the same fabric, so you don't notice the underlying square block.

So that is what I am playing with. I have more side triangles to put up on the design wall, and I have to decide if I want the patterns in the lights to do something - to make a secondary design - and if I do, then what do I want it to do? And there's an awful lot of busy here. Too much busy is not good, but organized busy is fine. I have a lot of juggling to do to get this to look really good. 

I like the high energy of it, so it will be a challenge to balance it all. As Oscar Wilde once famously said, "Oh, the anxiety - I hope it lasts forever."

I was shopping for fabric online a week or so ago and I needed one more yard for my order to qualify for free shipping, so I was cruising the Oriental section and saw this cat among some lotuses. Something about the eyes reminded me of Millie, so I ordered a yard of the fabric. Now this sweet girl will live in this quilt.

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle quilt. You can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download, so you can get started right away. You will need the Tri-Recs Ruler set, which you can get at your LQS.