Scrap Happy in May: A Finish and a Flimsy

 Back at the beginning of this year I made the decision to use up some of the fabric that had been in The Magpie's Nest for decades. I settled on a simple four patch pattern using patches that finish at 3." I had a bunch of 6" (finished) fussy-cut squares that I could use between the four patch blocks too. I had to cut more of those to get the size I was after for the finished quilt. Overall it was a pleasant project. It is finally a finished quilt.

 

My original intention was to donate it for a child in foster care or to Wrap the World With Quilts. However, now I find it to be a comprehensive record of the quilts I've made over the years (and a few I haven't yet made but thought I would). So this quilt is going to stay with me for the time being. 😁

I have continued my quest to use up older prints and remnants. If you've been here before you will have seen some of the scrappy blocks I've been making.  The greatest number were flying geese.

 When I stopped to count them up I discovered I had more than enough for another version of the free Remixed Geese pattern from Kaufman Fabrics. In some flights of geese I used a print for the large triangle (the goose) and sometimes I was able to also use that same print for the background. So when it came time to audition the geese for this new quilt top I tried to avoid using a single print more than once. 

If you follow the pattern directions they have you making only two geese at a time. The quilt top can then be assembled in horizontal rows. I tend to make my geese four at a time and sew them all into a strip. That makes it a greater challenge to lay out the blocks. Sometimes I have to separate the flight into two halves. I don't consider that a huge drawback. 

 The bigger challenge for me is extending my design wall to accommodate all the geese and then keeping everything in place until I can get it sewn together. Pins and the camera in my phone are a great help. Then it becomes akin to assembling a jigsaw puzzle, another activity I enjoy. 

 This is the completed flimsy. It would finish at 54" x 72" at this point. (I added an extra row to the pattern.) I'm currently debating whether to add a 3" border all the way around just to bring it up to 60" x 78." I believe I will be able to send this one out into the world when it is finally a finished quilt. 😊

I'm probably one of the last to post for Scrap Happy Day as this blog hop begins with Kate in Australia and I'm on the west coast of the United States. We all post on the 15th of each month in our various time zones, spanning the globe. You can see how others are repurposing or using up scrap materials all over the world by clicking on the links below.

Kate, Eva, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa,
Hannah and Maggie

 

Finishes and Flowers in May

 Progress on quilt finishing seems to be going pretty slowly these days. The tops get done, backs get made or purchased, and then things stall. To be fair, my in-house quilter has other things he likes to do. But getting the bindings made and applied and then sewn down just feels like it's taking longer than it used to. 

For the first time in our history we have sewn down the bindings on the latest quilts by machine. I prefer to hand sew them. I enjoy the process and I like the look better. Since the painful flare-up I experienced last year in my wrists and forearms I've been trying moderate my hand sewing activity. The stitching I do on my postcards or scrolls or textile books don't seem to be a problem. Maybe because I don't stick with that one activity as long as I tend to do when sewing down a quilt binding. 

This green quilt began simply as a way to use up some of the green prints in my stash. As the blocks were accumulating on the design wall Son commented that he really like the look. Green seems to be his favorite color too. So we decided that quilt would be his and I made it to the dimensions he requested. It's much narrower than most of the quilt I make at about 48 x 75 inches.

He quilted it with an overall leafy design.

 The other quilt I just finished is the Welcome Blanket, 40 inches square.

I found a brown remnant in my stash that worked really well for the binding. I like the way it disappears visually. 

Coming up with a quilting pattern was a bit challenging due to the single heart block and other considerations. In the end we decided on this simple gentle wave across the width of the quilt.

 And now for the flowers 😊  This is the lilac we planted in our front yard two years ago (or has it been three years?).

 Not directly, but across the street there's this marvelous specimen with paler florets.

I have no idea how old it is but look how tall and big it is! That's the roof of the garage on the property at the far left in the photo. 

Meanwhile, my roses and peonies are budding. The front lawn is sprinkled with delightful yellow buttercups too. 

What's growing in your corner of the world?

Postcards for the #Kookypostcardsal2025

 I have been remiss in sharing the textile postcards I've been making this year. You may remember this one for January's Snow Day! prompt:

February's prompt was Feathered Friends. I'd recently acquired a vintage hankie featuring a pair of machine embroidered birds so I used them as a starting point for my postcard.

 The prompt for March was Time for Tea. I'm not a tea drinker. Tea time isn't really a thing here in the States either. (The prompt originator is a UK resident.) It wasn't until I came across some Dr. Who prints in my stash that I was finally able to come up with a plan for the March postcard.

I called this one Timey-wimey Tea with the Doctor. 😁

April's prompt is Secret Garden. If you're familiar with the book or the movies you will know about the garden brought back to life behind a hidden door. That was just a little too obvious for me but I didn't have any other ideas until a conversation with friends in a Zoom call. One of them spoke of how love grows in our hearts. Bingo!

Hmm, I should have photographed it on a different background. Oh well. Lately I've been scattering tiny upright crosses to give texture to background areas. I enjoy the process and like the results visually. This postcard also gave me an opportunity to use some really tiny heart buttons I acquired somewhere along the way. The prompt for May is Faerie Tales. I wonder where that prompt will take me!

Welcome Blanket Quilt

 I admit that I composed the layout for the Welcome Blanket in haste and not at the top of my game.This is what I put up for Scrap Happy Day:

Since then I have tweaked the block placements just a bit.

And today I have added the border that will finish at two inches, making the quilt top 40" square.

 

It's kind of busy but I think it works. Not only has this small quilt given me the opportunity to use blocks from the Parts Department and some scrap batting, I was able to use another remnant for the border strips. It's been fun to complete a quilt top so quickly. That's all kinds of success! 😁
 

Scrap Happy in April

In the middle of making all those Hourglass/Big Dipper blocks and flights of geese (see previous posts) I received an email from the Welcome Blanket Project. I've contributed to them in the past but it's been a while. They request blankets that are 40" square. I want to use the geese and the Hourglass blocks for a larger quilt but I have a quantity of 6" Shoo-fly blocks in the Parts Department. (I have even more Hole in the Barn Door blocks that size but I'm not willing to part with them at this point apparently.) I can put 36 of the Shoo-fly blocks together with a two inch border all the way around to make a 40" square quilt top. 

So I pulled out the blocks and auditioned them on the design wall. 

They still need to be sewn together and a border fabric chosen but this is a good start. 😊

Scrap Happy Day is hosted by Kate with the intention of giving us the opportunity to share something we've made out of scrap materials or have repurposed in some way. We show our work on the 15th of each month in our various time zones (Kate is in Australia and we have players all over the world). Click on the links below to see what everyone else has been up to.

Kate, Eva, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa,
Hannah and Maggie

 

Celebrating Spring

I follow Kate at the Last Homely House and the Last Homely Garden on YouTube. She just posted this charming video from her garden in the north of England. Enjoy!

Coming Up for Air

 Jinxxxygirl (Deb) has pointed out to me that it's been a while since my last post. She's right! I hadn't realized so much time has passed. I've been head-down in the scrap pile all this time. Well, except for the times I've been down with a headache or what have you. 

I developed a menu of sorts for attacking the larger scraps in the stash. I begin by cutting a 7.25" square that I cut diagonally twice for flying geese. If that print is also appropriate for backgrounds in the flying geese units I'll cut 3.875" half-square triangles. (I still use the methods I learned at the beginning of my quilting career.) That takes up about 16" of length. Then I cut two 5.25" squares for the 4" (finished) Hourglass units that become 8" Hourglass/Big Dipper blocks. Next I cut pieces for the Janet Kime cat blocks. On occasion I've been able to cut background pieces for 8" variable Star blocks or a 4.5" patch for the center of a star. To polish off the fabric I'll cut 2.875" HSTs and 2.5" squares or rectangles for 6" Shoo-fly or Hole in the Barn Door blocks and 2" wide bits for Lego blocks. All of these patches get set aside until there are enough to begin pairing up backgrounds and foregrounds. 

I have quite the flock of flying geese now. More than enough for another version of the Remixed Geese quilt pattern. However, I don't have a recent photo of them.

I should now have 46 of the Hourglass/Big Dipper blocks. I'm shooting for 63 for the quilt plan I have in mind.

 More than that will allow for some to be eliminated from the final layout. And, of course, the plan may change at any moment! 

 I have no idea how many stars there are in various bags and boxes in the Parts Department. The postage stamp stars are separate from the whole cloth center stars, and I even have a separate bag that holds the stars on white-on-white backgrounds. Sometimes organizing can be carried a step too far. 😉 

The pile of patches for cats is a bit intimidating. I've cut background patches, but not nearly enough for all of the cats. There's probably a whole other quilt in that pile. 

Scrap Happy Day is just around the corner. What I will have to share on the day?

A New Addition to the Parts Department - Scrap Happy in March

 Now that I've lightened the load in my Parts Department I have turned my attention to using up more of the leftovers and remnants hanging around. I began with flying geese. This seems to be my Flying Geese Period. 😉 If you remember, recently every scrap block was a variable star!

3" x 6" geese

 Anyway, I found myself needing another block to use up certain size scraps. I landed on one called Big Dipper. 

I can't figure out why or how it came to be called that. I don't see a connection at all. If anyone knows of an alternate name please let me know! I may just refer to them as Hourglass blocks since they are made up of four hourglass units. The ones I'm making will finish at eight inches square.

 This is what I have so far. At the moment I'm thinking I will just keep making these until I have enough for a whole quilt top. I don't think they will play nicely with other blocks unless I use sashing between them. I prefer to just run my blocks together as often as I can get away with it.

Meanwhile, the geese continue to accumulate too. My smaller scraps get cut for 6" Shoo-fly or Hole in the Barn Door blocks and Lego blocks. The scrappy quilts I make go to local kids in foster care or are sent to Wrap the World With Quilts for distribution elsewhere. 

Scrap Happy Day is an opportunity to share projects that have been made out of scrap materials or something you've repurposed somehow. We post on the15th of each month. Kate is the organizer of this blog hop; you'll find her at the top of the link list below. Leave a comment on her blog if you'd like to participate in the future. 

Kate, Eva, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa,
Hannah and Maggie

Just Ducky

 I shared a bit of this at the end of January of this year. Now it's time to show you the completed book. Or as complete as it's going to be for now; there could be further embellishments in the future, you never know!

 This began with another child's handkerchief, folded in half to create the outer cover. I put a piece of quilt batting between the two layers of the hanky to stabilize it and give it a bit of substance. It's amazing how thin many of the vintage hankies are.  

I quilted around the Sailor Duck and eventually around the border print as well. The dragonfly was created commercially from felt.

The body of the duck hanky was plain so I added the corner from a lady's hanky and the seashell to fill up the blank space inside the front cover. Next to is is the lacy border from some yardage.

Flipping over the lace you find a duck print I've had for years in my quilting stash. To dress it up a bit I added the laces and rick rack.

This is what you see when you turn over the duck print page. The base of the page is fabric from an old handmade apron. I added the bit with the bird from another quilter's cotton and a piece of a woven ribbon to decorate that page. The lace on the facing page is blanket stitched to a piece of wool felt. I do like a variegated thread. 😁

 Turning over the lace...

You have the felt (for needles and pins if you like) and opposite, a side-opening pocket made from vintage cloth with more lace and a ribbon across the top. The vintage laundry tag serves as a tag on the pocket's edge. The little yellow bird is printed on the flannel that makes the base for this page. I added the little bit of feather stitching. 

Turning over that pocket-page you come to the center spread of the book. Somewhere I had acquired this strip of lace that had already been hemmed on one edge. By stitching up the sides and across the bottom I was able to turn it into pockets large enough to store packets of needles. Again, I added the strip of lace across the top (which creates just enough of a flap to help hold the needle tubes in place). I also stitched through the lace to divide the width into four narrower pockets. The fabric underneath the lace pockets is vintage feed sack.

On the other side of the center spread we have the flannel printed with another cutie pie duckling. I added some simple straight stitches to enhance the image. Just for kicks I sewed a scrap strip of the vintage cloth to the top of the page so it hangs loose. It echoes the green of the wool felt opposite (more storage for needles or pins). 

Lace over felt again (the other half of what you encountered at the beginning of the book), and the page I shared in process at the end of January. Purely for fun and decoration. 😊

Turning that over...

 The other half of the ducky print overlaid with another piece from the quilter's cotton embellished with embroidery stitches and a plastic rhinestone dragonfly. And the other half of the wide lace.

 Here you see the inside of the back cover. Another corner from a lady's hanky. I added the feather stitched foliage between the rosebuds and the metal charm and pink butterfly button. I've had that button forever! I was pleased to find a place for it finally.

To fill in the blank space on the back cover I simply stitched on a bit of fussy-cut lace. I like that some of the laces and edges peek out of the top and bottom of the book. This feels really lovely in the hand. Soft and squishy (except for the tubes of needles in the middle!). It measures about four inches tall and 4.5" wide. The handmade apron I used for a page base had ties made from a narrow green bias binding. I'm using a strip of that to tie the book closed although I haven't attached it to the book in any way. 

So there you have it. This was a fun project. I especially like finding ways to utilize the vintage linens that would otherwise sit in a pile or a drawer and rarely be seen. The engineering involved in the construction of pages and pockets and such is still new to me. I'm definitely learning as I go. I've already begun the next fabric book (and had to undo half of what I'd done too soon in the process). There's no telling when you'll see how it turns out. Hopefully, we'll all live long enough to see that day!

 

Scrap Happy in February - Not Quilt Blocks!

Scrap Happy Day is an opportunity for us to share things we've made from scrap materials or how we have repurposed something. This month my shares fall into the latter category, although scrap materials have also been involved. 

In my last post I showed some of the latest needle book I'd been working on. That has since been completed. To avoid over loading this post with pictures I will share it separately, in a post of its' own. But let me show you the other needle books I've made in recent weeks. 

This is the simplest one. I used a piece of denim from the leg of my husband's cast-off jeans for the base of the cover, then embellished it with the embroidered portion of a vintage handkerchief and a bit of embroidery of my own.

Three are no pages in this book. (Does that mean it doesn't qualify as a book? Is it merely a pamphlet?) Instead the inside of the cover has a pocket for a pair of scissors, made from more of the denim, and some felt for storing needles and pins. The yellow foundation is cotton from another vintage hanky.

On the back of the book I simply stitched on a vintage crochet piece rescued from somewhere.

This is the book I use almost daily. It's about 3.5" wide (closed) and 5" high. 

Another little book I've made began with a vintage child's hanky. It's about four inches square.

This little housekeeper is the main image printed on the hanky. Isn't she cute? I stitched around her and then seed stitched the rest of the background area with tiny upright cross stitches. And added the sequin bluebird!

There are two layers of the felted red wool inside the front cover, with a bit of lace to distinguish between the two layers. Wool is my preference for storing needles and pins. I understand it helps to keep them sharp and keeps them from rusting. The pair of Westies came from a vintage guest towel and are layered over a bit of fabric from an old hand made apron. I only sewed down three sides of the towel fabric so they make a pocket.

The center spread was created from a strip of pillowcase that had the crochet edging you see at the bottom of the page. The fabric of the pillowcase lines the apron fabric from the previous page. Then I layered strips of vintage laces on a piece of muslin to make the pocket front. Sewing the pages in place, up the middle of this signature, created two pockets in the middle of this book.

Turning the page you find the apron fabric again with another bit of crochet and a bead stitched on top and two more pages of felted wool. 

Here you can see the flower pot that is printed on the other three corners of the hanky and the laundry tag I sewed on just for the heck of it. (One of my great-grandmothers was called Eva. As I understand it, all of my grandmothers sewed or crafted. This laundry tag is my way of honoring them, bringing them into my projects with me.)
 

On the back cover I stitched around that flower pot and raw edge appliqued some favorite images from my quilting cottons, then filled in with more upright crosses. 

Here's a list of where you can see more scrapilicious projects. If you'd like to participate just leave a comment on Kate's blog. If it weren't for Scrap Happy Days I'd probably stop blogging altogether!

Kate, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan,
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera,
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Alissa,
Tierney, Hannah and Maggie

Warpping Up (in) January

 Our corner of the world has had a very mild winter up until this week. Suddenly we are experiencing below freezing temperatures overnight and well into the morning hours. There's even a chance we'll see a bit of snow in the next couple of days. I'm actually glad to have this change in the weather as it feels more appropriate to the season than what we've had until now. Still, winter has never been my favorite time of the year. 

The prompt for Tori's (KoolKookyKreatures on YouTube) postcard sew-along this January was "Snow Day!" I wasn't excited by this prompt - as you may have guessed. But I found some crazy patchwork I'd done all in white several years ago. That made for a great base.

I'd picked up that large applique somewhere along the way and it put me in mind of wind blowing. I used some bits of lace to create mounds of snow and a mini pom-pom trim along the top and bottom edges. A few snowflake sequins and a charm, some tiny white cross stitches scattered in the background, and I was done! I was pleased at how quickly it all came together once I got started. The prompt for February is "Feathered Friends." So far I don't have a clue how I will approach that one. Plenty of ideas, of course, but nothing in the planning stage yet.

The other project I've been working on this month is a little fabric book I'm calling "Just Ducky." It began with a vintage child's handkerchief. I folded it in half with a scrap of quilt batting between the layers to create the cover.

Inside I'm layering other fabrics and laces to create the pages. This is the third or fourth such book I've made so far. They began as needle books but are gradually evolving. This one will have a few pockets in it and a wool page that could be used for storing needles and pins but is less utilitarian than previous versions. (Come to think of it, I don't think I've shared previous versions with you. I'll have to make sure to do that soon.)

This is one of the embellished pages in "Just Ducky." And below is another.

When it is finished I'll share every page. I'm enjoying the challenge of working with vintage hankies. This is also giving me a place to use the charms and beads and laces I've collected over the years. It's about time I started using more of the treasures that have come into The Magpie's Nest!