Landscape Stash-Busting

Like all quilters, we landscape quilters sometimes find our scrap stash getting out of control. This week, it was time to bust the green foliage stash (as opposed to the fall foliage), which had already filled two deep containers.



(Yes, these are Swiffer mop pad containers.)

Little mis-shapen bits that a non-landscape quilter might normally trash may go a long way toward building a landscape--especially one with lots of foliage. Even sky scraps can be helpful (see July 14th blog post). Landscape quilters don't throw much of anything away--right down to dryer lint and fabric ravelings. (Yep, I have containers of those, too.)





Four separate foliage units were made by fusing scraps onto Pellon Featherweight interfacing and stitching all the raw edges down using Superior Mono-Poly, with a layer of tear-away stabilizer underneath the interfacing. (The stabilizer was then removed.)

I made an effort not to trim or re-cut any of the scraps if I could avoid it, in order to speed things along. These units will probably turn up in future landscape quilts, the first three as backgrounds and the last one as a foreground. There will probably be a lake nestled into the first two.

I emptied one scrap container doing this. Yay!!

Next time, I'll have a finished wall quilt (non-landscape) made from the beautiful hand-dyed fabrics by Kathleen Starr that came in the July Quilty Box. I did my own thing with them, nothing fancy; just something simple and fast to brighten up my basement hallway.

Have a great day!

Linda

Fire and Ice

Last week, the batik snowflake quilt top layout was looking pretty cold on the design wall. As mentioned in the post-before-last, for sashing I auditioned an orange batik as well as a gold, the only colors in my stash that could possibly warm this up. Neither of them looked right, so an order was placed for a fire-engine-red batik.

 Thank goodness, it does seem to have helped. Still, it looks icy enough!

The back is totally different, and not at all winter-y. Hoping it won't seem too frou-frou to its intended male recipient.

Have a great weekend!

Linda

Under a Pieceful Sky

This week saw the finish of the landscape begun with the scrap-pieced sky. VVHH (very versatile handy husband) thinks it's weird that the sky is seam-pieced while the rest of the landscape is raw-edge applique. What can I say? It is what it is. This came together faster than I thought it would.

Under a Pieceful Sky

The binding is a darker brown than my preference, but I was determined to used something already in my stash.

Some close-ups:

The colors here are more true (at least on my monitor) than those in the first photo.

Rather dark and blurry here. Need to have a talk with my camera (again).

Next week, the batik snowflake quilt will be finished. The red batik I ordered saved it!

Have a great weekend!

Linda

Lots of Progress

Lots of progress has been made in the last week, especially on the landscape quilt with the scrap-pieced sky.








It went from this...













to this...

After it's blocked, those wavy edges will be flat, at least for the most part. If I squared and trimmed it at this stage, even binding wouldn't flatten the edges.

After binding it, I'll take a straight-on photo.

Also, two quilt backs were pieced for the Center for Women and Families, and I hope to have those quilts finished in the next month, for a total of 4 quilts.

And in the meantime, the urge struck me to do something with these batik snowflake blocks I had cut out a few weeks ago. (The blocks are very much overlapped here because my design wall is too small. The quilt will be 44 x 60.)

The blue/gray/green/white batik was in my stash, and coordinates beautifully with the snowflake blocks. But let's face it: at this point, the quilt top does not look like something you'd want to curl up under. It looks flat-out cold. I'm not a 'red' person, hence there was nothing in my stash to warm this up (except orange or gold--both of which looked all wrong for a winter quilt). A couple of yards of a warm-red batik are now on order.

Have a great weekend!

Linda