Tuesday, October 19, 2010

More Scrap Madness

The Scrap Frenzy here at The Quilting Violinist continues, although it took an unexpected turn. 

But first things first.  I promised you a picture of the back of Intermission scrap quilt (from my previous post):

I just love that fabric.  Luckily, there's still about a yard of it left!


That quilt was so much fun to do that I decided to do another scrap quilt, this time from 2 1/2" squares for a different sort of look. 

This "Intermission" quilt addressed some of the squares of my scrap collection; this next one could address the strips.
I made the 2 1/2" strips, and then squares with the Accuquilt cutter:

For the sake of clarity I'll just show one strip at a time, although you can lay out alot more fabric for more strips.

Cut a 2 1/2" strip.







Turn the strip so it's perpendicular to the cutting blades, and fold over.  You can see that I will get 5 complete squares from this one strip.


Roll it through the cutter.






5 perfect squares, alot more precise than I could have done with my rotary cutter.  The 3 little pieces on the right were the only waste pieces.  There's remarkably little waste with the strip cutter.


So my idea was to make 2 color, 16 patch blocks and make a whole quilt like that.  A great idea, right?  But then, I had a big sale on Etsy on Monday-- the customer bought the "Autumn Dreams" table runner (the one with all the cute pumpkins and leaves on it) and the vintage Shakespeare fabric placemats, leaving me lacking in  "table fashions" for my shop. 

So the quilt became a table runner!
I love how the blocks look all jammed together like that.



Everything that I make for my shop that ISN'T a quilt I "turn and topstitch" to finish, as opposed to making a binding.  (The quilts, of course get a binding).  It saves me alot of time without sacrificing quality for these smaller items.  So this picture was taken just after I turned this, but before any quilting had taken place.


I love how those flowers, leaves and stems turned out!

I'm going to applique this AND quilt it at the same time.  Yes, it is possible with Viking's brand new walking foot with interchangeable feet:

I'll use the center foot for the applique, which will enable me to do whatever fancy stitch I want while still having the use of the walking foot.  The foot on the left is for "stitch in the ditch"-- see the little metal tab sticking out of the front?  You run that tab in your seam line and it drops the stitches right inside the seam.  And the one on the right is just for regular straight line quilting.  So you just attach the walking foot mechanism once, and snap the feet on and off as needed.  Brilliant.

This project will go quickly, so I should have pics of the finished table runner to show in a few days.  I'm going to call it "Checkerboard Posies".

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