Waste Not, Want Not

I’ve been intrigued with making small quilts lately because way back in the 1990′s, I received a couple of those little baggies from Keepsake Quilting filled with 1.5″ fabric samples. Being a packrat, I never threw them away, and they resurfaced a few weeks ago. It was a lot of fun separating those fabric samples into light, medium and dark value piles.

Here is the light value quilt:

56 little pinked fabric pieces were fused to a quilt batt, then I hooped the 2 layers and sewed out a dragonfly embroidery design from my Pfaff Creative Sensation with rayon thread. Removed it from the hoop, added a piece of muslin for the quilt backing, and free motion quilted it with cotton thread. The cotton thread blended with the background beautifully, and made the rayon embroidered dragonflies stand out nicely.

The piece was trimmed to the size of a piece of paper, and I used a built in stitch on my sewing machine to sew around the edges. Last but not least, my name was machine embroidered on the bottom right edge.

And here is the dark value quilt:

This time I placed a piece of white fabric down and sewed each little square onto the white fabric with a little stabilizer underneath. You might be able to see the black thread I used to stitch all the squares in place.

A layer of batting, was added, and I machine quilted straight lines vertically and horizontally. A gorgeous piece of black velveteen was added for the backing, and then I couched a yarn down around the edges, trimmed the quilt to the edge of the couched yarn, and sewed two rows of zig-zag around for good coverage. There was still a little white showing, so out came my trusty black Sharpie marker and voila, the white disappeared.

This quilt is not finished. It’s too bare naked looking for me. I’m planning on adding some silver shapes in some of the squares – maybe some washers, maybe some beads, but definitely something. My name will also need to be added.

I’m not as pleased with this one. I wish I had left more white fabric around the perimeter. The proportion is off to my eye, so now I know what not to do for the medium value quilt. And there will be a medium value quilt in my future. Don’t know when, but using those little pinked fabric squares in a quilt is like eating potato chips. You can’t stop at one.

Hugs…

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