Not Mine!

This beautiful quilt was not made by me, but by Julie M, who attended a workshop on the Scrap Slab Triangle quilts I gave to the Rising Star Quilters in MA several years ago. The quilt was displayed in a recent quilt show in Concord MA, and now the quilt will be published in an upcoming book with pictures of the quilts from the show.

I am always so excited to see what students do with my tutorials. I would never have thought to use black fabrics in the side triangles of the quilt, but they work fabulously in Julie M’s quilt.

Thank you Julie M for allowing me to share pictures of this stunning quilt!

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle Quilt. If you want to make one, it’s a great way to use up your scraps. I’ve made 13 of these quilts and they are all different. You can get the tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

Kangamangus, Finished!

 

This is a close up of the Kangamangus quilt. You can see some of the warm brown fabrics, the creams and the spectacular quilting. I've had this for a few weeks, waiting for me to add the binding and finish it up.

I finally got to it, and actually took it out for beauty shots the next day. Such is summer in NH. 

Sometimes you arrange it, back up, and you just know that you've got the "definitive" shot. That's what happened this time. I looked at this and I thought, Yup. That's the one. Funny that.

I didn't stop though, because I have learned that sometimes what I THINK I see is not what shows up in the camera, and there's nothing more irritating than getting home and looking at the pictures on my computer and thinking they suck and knowing I'll have to go out again. At at rate, this is pretty good too.

Long time readers know I dislike brown, and I hate, loathe and despise beige, so this quilt is rather a departure for me, but I really like it. I'm keeping this one.

Yeah, I know. Live and learn.

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle quilt, and I have made a few of them. You can see them here. If you want to use up some scraps, you can get my tutorial here. I am continually surprised at how many variations of this quilt there are.

Scrap Slab Triangles

 

My lavender fabrics are due to arrive on Friday and I have to do something in the studio while I wait, so I went through my bin of scrap slab triangles and got this up on the design wall. This is far too predictable, and I will definitely tinker with it. 

This That and the Other

 According to the Washington Post, you area a super reader if you read over 50 books in a single year. have beat that number by a significant margin for the last four or five years.

Last year, my Kindle helpfully told me I had read 99 books. What was annoying about that was that it told me that very late in the day on New Year's Eve so I did not have enough time to make the number an even 100.

So that's my goal for 2025.

Well, since I always have a book going it looks like I am going to crush that number. As of yesterday I had read 27, At that rate I will get to 100 before the end of June. (No, I do not speed read.)

 

So I dug out a jigsaw puzzle. 

I have been retired just short of six months, and in that time I have made eleven quilt tops. That used to be my average output for a year. So yeah, I have to find something else to do!

Now, I've told you that I am going to make an orange quilt. I am waiting for fabric, so until then, I have dug through the big scrap bins and pulled out the green bits and started to make slabs.

I've decided that the only way to work my way through those bins is to make slabs, and then cut triangles from them, so I have decided to work my way through all the bins in this way. 

I've cut 80 green triangles.

Now, in order to keep myself from going crazy, I'm just going to go through the bins and grab some of whatever color I choose, and then make scrap slab triangles. I can make lots of quilts with the triangles. So I'm going to make the triangles, and then store them for whenever. I still have lots of green fabrics, but I also have lots of other colors.

Here is where I am on the jigsaw puzzle.

The orange fabrics arrive on Tuesday, and will have to go through the washer and dryer before I can work with them, so I have a few days to make more slabs. (And read and work on the puzzle.)

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.

Peonies Goes Home

Have you ever met someone and had an instant connection? That's what happened when I met my friend L, above. L is from Uganda and I can fully understand her about 85% of the time, but we still manage to communicate very well.

I knew I'd make her a quilt, but we were both so busy it took a while for us to actually get together and talk about it.

We started talking about her colors and I grabbed a piece of paper. "Let me write this down so I don't forget," I told her.

Imagine my surprise as she listed the colors she liked. They were the colors of the triangles that were already on my design wall. 

"That was providential," I thought to myself. When I told L about it when she picked up her quilt, she was not surprised at all. "Yes," she said."that is God. That is Love."

Which is no surprise to any of us that make quilts for others.

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle quilt. If you want to make one you can get my tutorial here at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.

You can see all eleven of the Scrap Slab Triangle quilts I have made here.

Binding Peonies

 

I had made the binding for the Peonies quilt just after I finished it, so all I had to do was sew it to the quilt. Regular readers know I sew my bindings to the back of my quilts, and then do the finish hand sewing on the front.

It's going to be really pretty.

Yellow Scrap Slab Triangles

 

I spent some time Sunday afternoon at the Mall, visiting various wireless carriers, and then had a chat with  a person at the Apple Store. It was very interesting and informative.

After that I went home and went into the studio to cut some yellow (golden yellow) scrap slab triangles. Rather than overwhelm myself with every single scrap of yellow fabric I own, I took a very small selection out of the tiniest bin and made ten scrap slab triangles. I group them in stacks of ten, so it was a good number. I have fifty so far. I know I want to make another quilt with these, and I want to do something special with the blocks, so I have been thinking.  No reveal just yet, I'm still working it out.

After 26 years of one ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software, my company is going Live with a new one Monday morning. 

Wasn't quite sure I'd ever see it.

It is going to be a very interesting next few days. Weeks, even.

Borders for the Peonies Quilt

 

I cut the strips for the border of the Peonies quilt, then joined then at a 45 degree angle, and as I was getting ready to sew it to the quilt, I looked over and saw a stack of pinks, and got an idea.

In the stack of pinks I had these strips, which I had cut for the Seminole patchwork dress I made for my granddaughter, but they would make a terrific inner border.  

I cut enough strips, sewed them together, and joined them to the quilt.

I was pretty happy with it, so then I added the lighter strips I had cut.

After I sewed the strips to the quit, I put it up on the design wall and took a step back.

It looked OK, but then I saw the darker strip at the top.

Yeah, that had to go.

So I unsewed it and replaced it with another light fabric from the quilt.

So now it is done. I like the pink inner border. It makes a very feminine and pretty quilt.

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

Another Idea

 

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In the past I have tried to avoid arranging the triangles so they create this pinwheel, but this time I think I'm going to play with those. I've got so many greens I think I'll make it look like a garden.

I'm not sure how I will arrange the blocks, but I think I am going to have fun figuring it out.

I'm not planning to have more than eight of these, but their placement is up in the air too. They certainly won't be placed regularly.

Yellow Scraps

 

I have finished with the limey green scrap slab triangles. I have 82 of them. Next up is yellow. The first thing I had to do was separate the golden yellow fabrics from the yellow orange ones. I'll make those triangles separately. Once I had them sorted I had to iron them, and then straighten the edges and pair pieces of fabric together.

Then I had to press those pieces and pair them up. If the pieces of fabrics were large enough, I cut triangles.

I cut 20 triangles before I called it a day. I have a lot more yellow scraps to go through.

Earlier I watched the Men's Final at Roland Garros; washed one of the windows in the living room and cleaned the mini blind of that window, made my lunches for the week ahead and cooked fish chowder for dinner.

I've made over 10 quilts with these scrap triangles. If you want to make one (or two or three), you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

Scraps, Slabs and Triangles

I've just finished four quilts in a fairly short time, and now I have to figure out what to do next. Since I have some big bins of scraps I decided to make scrap slabs and then cut the into triangles. I've got a few different layout ideas rolling around in my head, this is a good start.

Sometimes I'll make a slab and I know I can get several triangles out of it but while I am making up my mind I lose track of how I planned to cut them out. So I have these two blue triangles I use as "placeholders". I can move them around while I figure out how I want them to look when I cut the triangles.

When I cut scrap slab triangles like this, I work on one color at a time. Today it was light, lime-y green. I really want to use up the fabrics in my bins. I group the triangles in tens, and then stack them on my worktable. This is six stacks, so sixty blocks. The average Scrap Slab Triangle quilt has 120 triangles, so this is half a quilt.

I am always amazed at how much fabric is in the little bins.

 
 

Arrowheads

 

I've had a lot of fun making blue scrap slab triangles. Here you can see some of the different fabrics.

I am always amazed at how many layout variations there are in the Scrap Slab Triangle Quilts. I am going to arrange these blue triangles in up and down vertical rows, almost like arrowheads.

As I did in Black Abacus, I plan to arrange the light side triangles so they sort of blend together. 

Now, before you get worked up about the arrangement of the triangles, bear in mind this is the first go round. Before I can really arrange the blues so the values do something interesting I have to get them up on the design wall first, so that's all I've done. 

I already know I'm going to like this one.

This will be a Scrap Slab Triangle Quilt. You can see more of these quilts here. You can get my tutorial for these quilts here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download, so you can get started right away.

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.

 

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.