Scrap Busting Series #2 - Rails

I purchased this stripe fabric at my local quilt shop on sale last year with the plan of making the Good Vibrations quilt . It was a 54" wide print by Michael Miller.

The border was from a couple of left over strips of wide backing fabric. One corner had a chunk cut off so I had to angle all 4 corners to be able to use those scraps too. I think it worked out okay with the on-point setting. It measures about 48" x 68".  Next in line for the scrap busting series is a halloween quilt that really does stretch those scrap pieces!

Auditioning borders

One of the items on my FAB 4 list this week was to get the borders on this Scrub Busting Series flimsy.

  I have a cut off from an extra wide backing also in my scrap bin that I'm going to try and make work.  

While this may look like an awful lot of solids to be in scraps, it came from this piece of Michael Miller 54" wide fabric I purchased at the LQS last year sale.  

I had bought it to make the Good Vibrations quilt, a UFO, that I finished last month.

Those were some long strips from *I think* a piece of 5 yard fabric. They were the scraps still on my cutting board when I decided to start the series so I wanted to use them up rather than toss them in with the rest of the scraps.  

Sometimes it's hard to continue on with a quilt once you see how it's going to turn out.  All I really want to do is go start the next one!  

Saving ideas

I'm putting all the ideas I've saved for the Scrap Busting Series in a photo album.  Walgreens had a 50% off sale so I had 75+ printed.  I've been saving digital copies to have printed when there was a sale.  (I'll start another folder on my computer with new ideas as I find them for the next photo printing sale.)  

It's nice to be able to take the pages out of the album and spread them out to decide which idea will work best with the bin of scraps I'm working on.  Some will be a combination of several ideas, some are just the setting I like and will substitute my rail fence blocks for the block used in the inspiration photo, and others might just be color combinations that I thought were interesting and didn't want to forget.

Ordering the prints was one of the chores on my list of 20 items yesterday so I'm glad to check it off.  Now I just have to put them in an album but first, I have some binding to work on!

Boho rails

I'm going to call this quilt "Boho Rails" because that's what it looks like to me.  And, because I want to count it as my first quilt in the Scrap Busting Series.

It's based on the free Toni Quilt pattern by GE Designs.  The blocks also look a lot like Chinese Coins.  Considering the batik scraps were pieced using a foundation, they're also string blocks.  In the quilting world, there are often several names for the same block and many variations of traditional blocks with new names, just to keep things fun!

50" x 70"

Here's a close up of the sections and the alternate block fabric I used.  

When I asked for recommendations to use up some short batik scraps, this pattern was one of the suggestions offered by Stashbuster member, Liz in Houston.   She's been posting a lot of interesting  quilts from her Scrap Busting Series. using a No Scraps Left Behind block.  Those two things combined is what really intrigued me about using a rail fence block to do my own Scrap Busting Series of quilts.  I'm really excited to get going on it and see how many quilts I can make from my scraps.  (Of course they multiply overnight so it may be a never ending endeavor, and that's okay too. 😍)  

Here's a photo of the Toni Pattern again with a pretty standard four rail block.

For the love of old jeans

 There's nothing quite as comfortable as a pair of soft worn denim jeans.  Well, almost nothing...

...except maybe a quilt made from jeans that are too worn to wear any longer. The backs of the legs are almost always in good shape.  These were on top of my scrap bins so, I'll add them to my scrap busting series as I embark on a mission to reduce my overflowing bins of scrap fabric!

De-boning them is pretty quick work with electric scissors!  (Don't forget the inside of the back pockets.  I'm always happy to find really dark pieces of denim there.)  My friend, a professional long arm quilter, told me several years about how her dad had suggested using electric scissors to cut batting might make it easier.  He was right!  I use them for batting but, they also work really well cutting through the thick denim seams.

 
These are destined to become a quilt sort of like a pair of quilts I made at the beginning of the year, only smaller. And, not this pattern. All of the quilts in my Scrap Busting Series are going to be based on the rail fence block so I'll have to think about a variation of the block for denim.

Links previous posts about these quilts are here, here, here, and the cutting instructions are in this post.

Busy day

 

I stayed up waaay too late last night making a paper-pieced mermaid block to take to my quilt guild meeting this morning.  They were collecting them to make an ocean themed quilt to raffle.  I noticed about 3 am that I had a section of water (by the mermaid's right arm) oriented in the wrong direction.  Being super tired, I said "good enough" and went to bed about 4 am.  I got back up around 7 am.  As luck would have it, there were a lot of blocks turned in so it might not make it into the quilt.  I'm good with that.

We also have about 30 more monarch caterpillars so, my husband and i went to a nursery that specializes in plants for butterfly gardening and I was able to get some giant milkweed to feed them. And, while we were west of town, we dropped by to visit a nephew and his family.

When we got home, I pulled a few strips for the first quilt in my Scrapbusters Series.  These are an odd 1 3/8" strips left over from this quilt finished last Sunday.  I have an idea for these from a photo I saw in Pinterest and it's going to be fairly quick and easy.  Though, the quilt will be set on point and that always takes a bit longer.

I orderd EQ8  (Electric Quilt 8) software.  I've been wanting to get it for quite a while and I think it will come in especially figuring out the number of blocks I'll need for my various rail fence ideas.  And, it'll give me an opportunity to experiment with colors combinations.  It should be here tomorrow (Amazon has spoiled me!) and I can't wait to try it out.  I ordered the beginners guide book and practice designs to help with the learning curve.

Batik Strings

I mentioned about two weeks ago that I wanted to start sewing string blocks as leaders/enders.  Normally, sewing strings can get quiet messy with fabrics strewn everywhere.  It hasn't been a problem with these.  I began by slicing a pile of short strings to approximately 4 inches long so I'm able to just grab one and sew to the foundation as I go.

I have about half of the blocks I need finished and I checked my calculations.   I do have enough of the background fabric at the top of this photo to make a quilt 54" x 74", a nice size lap quilt.  

Here is the free pattern again by GE Designs that I'm using with strings rather than 2 1/2" strips.  I've altered the size a bit to fit my string foundations.

I have so many light strings I may have to frame the background blocks with a bright color to make them pop rather than blend in  I really want to work with stash fabrics as much as possible so I'll try out a few and see which one looks best. I'm anxious now to get the rest of the blocks completed!