So I didn't get another quilt top done this week. But I did start another one. It took me a while to decide what I wanted to work on. I thought about doing a slice and flip quilt but I don't have a large enough surface right now to do the slicing so that was put back on the shelf. Then I decided to do the Keyhole pattern from Missouri Star Quilt Company (MSQC).
I thought I had two jelly rolls of batiks in primary colors. I was wrong. What I had was three rolls of 20 - 2 1/2 in strips of assorted batiks. I had bought them on Ebay a long time ago. Like 15 years ago. They have been stashed away waiting to be used. This is why it is important to inventory you stash. You just don't know what you have and what you need. Karen Brown suggests doing it a couple of times a year.
The strips I had weren't going to work for my vision of the Key Hole quilt. But I had seen another quilt on Pinterest that used strips and looked to be fast and easy. It was just blocks made out of strips, sashed in white with corner stones from the same prints in the blocks. I thought I would go ahead and use these strips for it.
I pressed my strips and set about putting together strip sets. Now the intelligent thing to do would have been to pull up the pinterest article and read it before starting. Of course I did not. I just started sewing the strips into sets of four. I didn't even make the sets the same. I had 10 different prints so I was very random in the pairing of the prints. I made sure to put darker values together with the brighter values. Later when I did pull up the article to show my daughter what I was working on, I saw that the block were made of only three strips. They were also rather uniform in appearance. Oh well I persevered with the four strips and my random composition. I ended up with 67 - 8 1/2 inch blocks and over 100 corner stones. I've decided to go with an off white sashing from fabric that I already have.
I am going to run into the same problem with this top as I have with the cobblestones and windmills quilt. No place to lay it out. I've decided that I am going sweep off my front deck (or back) then lay down couple of flannel backed table cloths. I am going to get these quilts laid out and put together.
Once that is done, I will have made 7 quilt tops this year. That is not very many but all of them will have come from my stash. Hopefully I will be able to find backing fabric for them in the stash as well. If I can't, I will buy some. But in the end, I will have least put a minor dent in my stash.
I still haven't finished inventorying all of my stash. The yardage is still in bins, the bins are in the closet of a room that currently isn't easily accessible. But as my husband and son start finishing the family room, things will start being less chaotic. They have another book shelf to build and we have a bunch of painting to do. I am hoping to be able to access that room next week or the week after.
I am also hoping that I will get my cutting surface back. Kim has set up his office in the family room on my little stone table. The table is a nice desk size surface of pink granite. It was a steal at $40. We have found it to be really handy. Anyways I am hoping to be able to cut some borders out this week. Not sure how much I will do sewing/quilting wise. I expect to put in some long hours at work since our big audit is this week. I just want to have the area ready if I can scrape together 20-30 minutes.
I am going to see how many quilts I can do from my stash this year. Backings are probably going to be my biggest hurdle. Well that is it for this week. How about challenging yourself to make a quilt with only fabric from your stash?
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