#Scraptastic

I'm a finalist!  WOW!  

When I'm sleepless, I watch Craftsy quilt classes.  

At 3:30, tired of tossing and turning, I decided to spend an hour getting new ideas and skills.  

and discovered my quilt is a finalist in a contest on using scraps!!!

Well, that just rocks my day...week... month!  

You can vote for me if you like it. 

Craftsy #Scraptastic 

The others are great works using leftovers too. Beautiful paper flowers, knitting, crochet...maybe I need to relearn how to crochet?  

I've been missing time to blog.  Each year, May hits like a hurricane. Endings and beginnings. Emotionally and physically hectic.  This selection is a nice addition to the mix.  

Thanks Craftsy!  If you haven't taken a Craftsy class, you should give it a try.  Always available, always informative and  for me, generate so many ideas for new projects or solutions to finish out old ones. 

And I'll be back blogging and quilting in June after the endings have ended and the beginnings begin.

April Flowing Like a Stream

Just enjoy some pictures of quilts on a lovely spring evening   

I don't have much to say. 

Sometimes, there are not words...

Back in February, I started the quilting on Tire Tracks.  

Finally, I made myself finish.

This is a very large quilt - 110 x 93.  

This is quilt #29!  

Poor thing has been waiting for my skills to build since 2013.

Tire Tracks and Spring Fling Green are on a brown truck as of this morning heading to the appropriate recipients (I hope they didn't switch the labels!)

totally 70's sheet backing for Tire Tracks

The little scrappy improv quilt started as a method of avoiding clean up from a white and neutral bin sorting. It finished itself in two weeks. 









This week has been very hard for me and my school family.  

Prayers, peace and healing to all facing unexpected and heart wrenching loss. 


I've been down this road ahead of you.  One spring not so very long ago.  
I'm still sewing for my healing, starting my 7th year alone in order to piece together the fragments of my life, my mind, and my soul stitch by stitch into something new and unique.

Raiders are crying. 

Finished It Up Friday

TaaDaa!  A Friday Finish

I'm home on a Friday, wooohoo!  

So I cut binding and bound the Spring Fling Green, getting done just as the sun came over the house into the back yard.

I ran out with quilt & camera to capture the sunny day and motivate myself for massive yard work this weekend before the rain arrives.  

The pieces were cut in January while my sewing machine gathered dust at the repair shop.  With no way to sew, I did a massive stash clean up, sorting scraps yet again.  


There were so many small solid pieces in odd shapes, I decided to make a dent the green scraps using the Mint Julep Quilt featured  McCalls Quilting  Sept/Oct 2013 by Lisa Bee-Wilson TowerHouse Quilts 

Look at the sun shining through the quilt to the back.  A thin summer quilt perfect for the boat and beach!

Didn't even dream of quilting to the beautiful finish she accomplished.  Well, ok, I did dream about it, I just didn't try to do it!    

Finished is better than Unfinished!

Now I'm off to the home supply store for weed-eater string!! A different kind of string for me to work with this weekend.  

Original Copy Quilt

Everything is built on something that came before it.

The TED Radio Hour of March 20 begins with that premise. So did the quilt made of Etcetera Clothing Fabric Samples donated by a fabulous friend. 
As a quilter stuck in traffic, I bobbed a bit to La Di Da Di even if I didn't like it way back when and pondered the borrowing ideas in quilting.

When I returned to quilting in 2009, I scoured the internet for tutorials and ideas.  Pinterest appeared in 2010.  I pinned all sorts of lovely work by others, longing to make it for myself.

The often debated, highly vague definition of modern quilting from the Modern Quilting Guild acknowledges building on something that came before.

Some quilt bloggers share tutorials for the methods they use to create quilts. From choosing fabric and pattern to binding the finished quilt, every step of the way can be found on the Quilternet.  Quilt patterns are sold on Etsy and Craftsy. Fabric manufactures provide free patterns.  Yet, almost every single possible layout, step, and technique around is a variation on one done by those crafters that came before us.

While enjoying the music compilation of Axis of Awesome's Four Chords, I remembered Duane Allman's biography discussing how he used his big toe to control an LP as he practiced hours and days and weeks to recreate each note, each lick, each nuance the blues masters made that connected with his soul.  (picture of Duane included just to make my heart flutter)



Is anything original?  Kirby Ferguson proposes in his Ted Talk that only The Big Bang is original. 

My Quilts are copies.  MY COPIES! 
While the colors and fabric are usually my choices, the pattern and quilting are usually adaptations of things I've seen others do.  While I rarely (never) follow written patterns, I sketch the basic blocks or layout for myself and work from my own sketch. 


So I want to say thank you my inspirations.  Many are bloggers.

 According to Charles Caleb Colton:

 "Imitation is the sincerest [form] of flattery".

My first five quilts are just variations of work done by decades of quilters before me:   4 x 4 blocks, bow ties, Log Cabin blocks including the red center square to represent the heart of home. Irish Chain layouts, and half square triangles.  The basic construction tools every quilter brings to a quilt.  

These quilting basics are the licks the master guitarist brings to the craft.  The code the programmer brings to the computer that gives us Pinterest...


Quilt 6 - Kaleidoscope quilting was taught to me by a friend, who had seen it somewhere...skills passed through old-fashioned personal interaction!

Quilt 8, 11, 12, 22, 41 - scrappy use of leftovers taught to me by my Grandmother.

Quilt 9 is my copy of an advertisement for fabric.  I believe was a Hofman's Bali Batiks ad.  And there is not one batik in my quilt.

Quilts from quilts featured in print publications - magazines and books:
13,14,16,23,24,25,31,47,48
Thank you Amy Ellis, Fons and Porter, and the best book ever...You Can Sit on My Quilt.

Quilt 7 was my first internet steal.  I recently read my favorite quilt and stitch blogger  Chawne @ Completely Cauchy began blogging in the simpler Quilternet age.  I have been fascinated with, inspired by and down-right copied this woman's work. 

Other quilts I saw on the internet and I sketched my outlook of the quilt including creations by award winners, SAH Mom's, newbies and treasured instructors.  Some of my quilts look nothing like the originals, but were inspired by something I saw...


22 Other Quilts from Internet finds!!
15, 17,20,27,29,32,33,34,36,37-46,49,50 & 51!

I wish I knew just who I stole this from!  It has been so long ago, I've lost my bookmark to the inspiration! :-(

Internet tutorials are wonderful.  They gave me Rachel's Bottled Rainbows that I used to teach My Man's daughters how to sew.  Look at Abi go!! She stayed up all night that first night making her squares.  A memory I treasure.  And just doing what other's have done before her...
So...what is my point?  I quilt.  It helps me deal with every day.  I appreciate other people who share their craft because it inspires me to do what helps me express and heal myself!   

I suppose my point is:  

Everything is built on something that came before it.

Including quilts... especially quilts?

Fabric Store Road Trip - I must be getting old!

Fabric Store... 

HERE I COME!  

Anytime I make a weekday trip to the ATL, I double check my fabric budget so I know my limit at A Scarlet Thread!  

Tomorrow is the day! And I need things, not just want them for a change.  








A dear friend's family quilt top needs a backing.  And a backing and binding is needed for the finish of this quilt top another dear one donated to me.    

I thought I had this one covered, but didn't realize how large this really was going to finish out.  

I'm thinking I will indulge myself with some perfect designer I rarely spend the $$$ on something like Kaffe Fassett... because the clothing of the Etcetera Clothing Line is so pricey, it rather justifies my indulgence.  

And then the progress on the "Scraps of Failure" Quilt appear to make the scrap version greater than the parent quilt!  It needs some love and cuddle-ness on the back, does it not?  

So, the plastic will be hot in the morning!  

Totally miss you Sandy @ Colonial Quilts - you have left a void that is only filled with a trek to the ATL.  I'm sorry the lovely ladies at Sew Much More don't carry more of the solids and fancies I crave.  I think I bought the whole bolt of Michael Miller purple they had in the store. 

After the shopping spree, I will be turning over and fertilizing my mama's garden for her tomato patch.  May the produce of her 86th year be one of the best!  Love her so!

Scrap Time!

Crazy things happen when scraps are involved.  This is the story of the crazy scrap quilt that just is sorta happening in my head and hands with nothing on paper. No plan, just color and texture.  

So, I made a failure quilt.  It was a good idea, but not enough care was taken working on the bias...but this is the story of the scraps. I feel responsible that all scraps must be used because that was how I was raised. Even looking at this quilt makes me dizzy now.  I only ripped and restitched twice - because I realized NOTHING was going to make this straighten out! 



My grandmother saved every little thing. Raising 5 kids while running a farm all by herself through the depression, making do and reusing was how a person survived.  My grandmother sewed dresses she designed from the Sunday Atlanta Journal advertisements for her own mother and the other ladies in the county. Every scrap could be used for her own kids clothing or at least a quilt or potholder.


I was eight years old, driving that old lady crazy in the summer as her youngest grandchild, a little 'town girl' full of energy and running wild, she tamed me (a bit) with her scrap box.  Teaching me to sew bonded the two of us forever.  

Something wild and crazy is happening with some yardsale black linen like fabric and the scraps from the failure quilt.

 Having fun.  And it may fail just like the original quilt, but dang, this is fun.  



I don't have the leisure to post of WIP Wednesday, or Finish It Friday like the full time Quilt Bloggers, but I do these things on my own crazy time line!  Thanks for visiting with me!

Modern Quilt Survey

Despite the numerous things I should be doing, I'm playing with online surveys!  

I need to make a survey for the $$$ job, so I'm working out the kinks with a Quilt Survey. 

The link below will take you to quilts from my previous blog post and ask you . . . 

Modern or NOT?

Modern or Not Survey!?!

Just have fun!  

Thanks, 

Lee