A Year of Finishes

Why not add another flickr group to my plate!

A friend of mine, Shanna, is a hard core blogger compared to me.  She is working on this whole project with Melissa.  You can join in too!

My January project is to finish my Batik Stripper Quilt top.  I sewn this part at Shanna's house on Dec. 29th, I decided to do a 45 degree sewing between each strip, the hardest part was making sure the angle was going the same direction on one long strip, but not every row is going the same direction.


I used about 40 batik 2.5" strips from a shop-hop collection that I gathered in 2011, it maybe covered half of my queen bed.  I estimated that I needed to cut another 40.  I am amazed I have 40 different batiks to add to this!  I didn't even get into my purple drawer!

I spent one night cutting, about 2-3 hours.  Another night sewing some together, another 2 hours.  Then another night sewing the rest and iron to see how big this is and it's FINISHED!



This could easily be a weekend quilt project.  I did not follow any pattern, it is all straight sewing.  It is a very nice way of using up scraps or jelly rolls that you have no clue what to make.  You can google "Jelly Roll Race" and see the different variations to this very simple idea.

Have fun and keep quilting!

Stripper Project -- Over the Rainbow

This is an ongoing project which group members have 2 months to make a strip of blocks that follows a theme of some sort, then pass on to the next person, and so forth.  The ending project resulting in a quilt make with LOVE, creativity, and hopefully, a size that is desired.

My first project is Melissa's Rainbow strip.  She had an amazing group of different colors with solid white background.

My first idea, learn a new technique!  ha ha!  I used Judy Sisneros' book "Rectangle Pizzazz" and a lot of pins.  It turned out really well.  Using only one 6" strip of a variegated rainbow fabric and one 6" strip of solid white fabric produced this:


Then I read Melissa's request, she wants the strip to be about 14" tall . . . so I had to stack these and trim the white down.  Nonetheless, I did a second strip and put it all together for this effect:


Then I read Melissa's request again . . . a minor detail, she wants a "goose" in each block.  Well.  Can't make the whole strip of just this!  I would not be following the rules.  *sigh*  So I had another grand plan, add actual quilt blocks on the ends with the flying geese.

First block is a free-form paper pieced flying geese in rainbow prints, with a dash print background for this:


Then I did a combination block of the curves and flying geese leftovers for the other side, shown here in the upper right corner:


All together, this strip with Melissa's looks like this:

If I had a wall big enough, the picture would of turn out better, showing the full effect of the rainbow.

The flying geese blocked changed a little as well, I added more fabric so it can be trimmed down but also so it will be as long as Melissa's strip (upper left)