Rag Quilts Finished

I finally dragged myself into a laundromat and washed the rag quilts to fray up the seams. I quite like how they turned out. I am definitely going to make a couple more to toss down into the basement family room.

It was a fairly significant investment of time to snip all those seams, but it paired nicely with our new subscription to Disney+.

Once it's washed, I think I prefer the 3/8" seam over the 1/2" seam; it just looks a little tidier.

Trying Something New

As our long-time readers probably know, since 2012 we've been having an ongoing issue with spending too much time playing video games. We wasted about five years of our lives playing a variety of RPGs and though we finally gave up those, we still play too much Forge of Empires (FoE). In an effort to try and find something that can compete for our eyeballs, we're trying a new website that will help our gamify our life priorities: Habitica.

We started yesterday, not specifically because it was a New Years' resolution, but because we revisited our goals for 2019 and confirmed that we didn't do too well on our writing-related goals so we went looking for a way to stay on track better. When I found Habitica, we installed the apps and spent several hours yesterday entering all kinds of tasks. So far, our results look promising. I barely looked at FoE yesterday and spent a lot more time working on cleaning and writing tasks.

We shall see how this goes, but early results look promising.

Another Rag Quilt

Since I'm still waiting for the yellow fabric for my batik quilt, I decided to whip out another quick rag quilt. I had originally planned to put a green border on it, but it's already so big for a lap quilt, I think I'll leave it off. I managed to scrounge all the yellows from my scrap bin.

I have quite a bit of seam clipping left to do, but I finally got the spring-loaded clippers to work on that. I'm particularly proud of the backside of the quilt, which is basically the same but without the ragged seams.

Batik Quilt Backing

This week, I decided I wanted to get started on a quilt for the back of the flower quilt I finished in October. I'd like to get these projects done so I can send them off to the machine quilter and finish binding them this winter.

The option I ultimately selected is called Fire Dance and I grabbed the design from Batik Beauties by Laurie J. Shifrin. I want a quilt that isn't too difficult but is still striking.

I found the perfect fabric for the large field at Indonesian Batiks; it's called Red Planet Rising.

I'm still trying to figure out the other colors. I'd like to use a burgundy fabric I already own, but I'm struggling with the other two options. I made a couple of test blocks from fabric I already have, but I don't like how it turned out. There's not enough contrast between the Red Planet Rising and the raspberry batik next to it.

So, I decided to change the secondary colors to yellow, but I've exhausted my stash. I use up a lot of yellow fabric. I ordered some fabric today but since it's a week before Christmas, I won't be surprised if it takes two weeks for my order to arrive.

I did mostly finish the rag quilt. I haven't snipped the seams yet, but I sewed it all together. I like how cozy it is and I think I'll make more. I'm still not sure about the exposed seams, but I really like that I don't have to spend another $65+ for someone to machine quilt it for me. So, I'm going to give this technique a shot for a couple more lap quilts this winter once I figure out the fabrics and layouts.

We just subscribed to Disney+ for winter so we're probably going to fall into a bit of a TV binge. There are quite a few movies we've been wanting to see that we now have access to.

Rag Quilt Started

I was supposed to make Jeff a wool coat but I keep getting distracted.

A friend of mine said she wanted to make some easy quilts for Christmas presents and I poked around for ideas and ran across directions for making Rag Quilts. Rag quilts are made with layers of fabric and flannel/fleece. It caught my eye because when I was sifting boxes this past summer I found a 5-yard piece of lavender flannel that I bought to make pajamas more than ten years ago. I don't like sewing clothes anymore so it was just sitting there and I've been debating just getting rid of it.

Anyway, when I found this project, I decided I wanted to try making one. Plus, it would be a good way to use up most of that flannel. As usual, I decided to make a plan. I am much more efficient with my time when I know what I'm doing.

Today, I finished cutting out the pieces and assembling the rows.

Tomorrow, I will put the rows together.

Dinosaur Lap Quilt

This weekend Jeff went off to a conference so I decided it was a good opportunity to spend the weekend sewing. I decided to practice the whirligig pattern before starting a large quilt. (I don't know the real name of the pattern, that's just what I started calling it.) In a day and a half, I almost finished a new lap quilt.

I didn't manage to get the borders put on before Jeff got home, but I did get it mostly pieced.

The fabric is called Lost World designed by Dan Morris for Quilting Treasures. The dinosaurs came in a panel. Even though they reuse some of the dinosaur shapes, they all have different coloring, so no two squares are alike.

I might try quilting this one myself. I don't like machine quilting because it's hard to deal with all the bulky fabric and batting on my regular sewing machine, but I may give it a try.

And it's done (the next day):

And here's the backing. I used up about half of the excess fabric.

Double-Sided Quilt

While I was sifting boxes last year I finally found a quilt I made almost 20 years ago for a full-size murphy bed. I made it small for the murphy bed, it's more like a twin size.

I decided I'd like to make another quilt like it, but larger, for our queen size beds. Since it's about $180 to get a queen/king-sized quilt machine quilted I've decided I'm going to start making them double-sided. 😃

On one side it will be a Fall quilt based on my earlier design.

I spent quite a long time trying to find some fabric that would work. I finally found this discontinued print on eBay for a really good price. These boxes are 5" square.

Harvest Gathering. Designed by Color Principle for Henry Glass & Co.

This is a nice quilt design because it uses small amounts of different fabrics.

This is almost the final fabric palette, though I did pull out some of the brighter yellows and add some lighter yellows to blend better with the beige background of the block fabric.

My preliminary plan for the other side is a Winter Quilt. ElectricQuilt can't deal with rotating the border print the long way, so it looks funny in the plan.

The centers are made of a metallic angel fabric I've had in my stash for years. The greens and reds are also fabrics from my fabric wall. The sashing and outer border will be made from a stripe fabric I ordered on Black Friday.

I haven't received the fabric yet so my plan is still subject to change.