From My Mother's Scraps--Part II

Lately I've been working on documenting Mom's quilts. So I thought this would be a good time to share more of the projects I have made (or have in the works) from the scraps she has passed on to me over the years from the quilts she has made. You can find part one here.
I will show my project first and then will follow with Mom's quilt that begat it. : )

When I recently found projects hiding in my sewing room closet, the brown/cream HSTs for these baskets were among them. They were leftover from one of Mom's few tied quilts. It was a quilt Dad had seen in a book and liked it, so Mom made it for him.

Don't you hate when this happens?

I'm not sure if this is how it will finish, or if I will add more borders. Right now it would finish just under 12".
Yesterday I sewed up the baskets (which will finish at 5") 
and was about to sash them with a blue plaid from Mom's leftovers, but it wasn't my favorite combination. Then I had the bright idea to use part of Dad's favorite blue plaid shirt. I'm really liking the fact that this is made from leftovers of a quilt Mom made for Dad and fabric from Dad's favorite shirt.

This is a really poor photo of Mom's quilt--and then I made it worse by using a photo of the photo. I'm not sure why, but Mom called this The Cowboy Quilt. She made it just 4 or 5 years ago.
You can see that the stars were made using brown/cream HSTs, and Mom had made a few dozen more than she needed.
When she was choosing the fabrics for this quilt she wasn't pleased with the selection of plaids available locally, so I brought her some of the plaid shirts from my stash. I believe this is the only quilt in which she ever used repurposed shirts.

You have seen this on my design wall recently. It is still hanging out there, but I have sewn a row together now and then. The first three diagonal rows are made. The others are falling off the wall.

This began with the scraps from Mom's one venture into the lovely, flowery world of watercolor quilts. 
This was named "Drink the Living Water". I don't know if that was the name of the pattern, or if she made it up. If you enlarge the photo you may be able to see the stipple quilting--it is all by hand. I can't imagine doing that over all those seams!

I didn't have enough leftovers from the watercolor quilt to get as many blocks as I wanted, so I also incorporated squares from Mom's Postage Stamp-ish quilt. It isn't a true postage stamp quilt if you define that as a quilt with 1" finished squares. The squares in her quilt finished at 1 1/2". Close enough, to me.
I liked the fact that the pastel inner border on this quilt is also made up of little squares.

A few of the blocks in the quilt below were already assembled, but not used in the quilt of Mom's. There was a bunch of leftover squares already cut, too.

I did have to supplement the scraps just a tiny bit to have enough blocks to make a good sized throw quilt. I don't know why I haven't quilted this yet.

(My camera lens appears to have had a smudge when I took this photo years ago.)
I was with Mom in a local quilt shop when she saw a quilt made from this pattern on display. She really liked it and bought the pattern then and there. Mom rarely did that. Most of the quilts she made were from books or magazines she or I owned.

The challenge I have always faced when I incorporate units that Mom had already assembled, is the fact that in all Mom's decades of quilting, she has never owned a 1/4" foot, yet she has always used the edge of her foot as her seam guide, so her seams are always larger than 1/4". Matching the units I make with the units she makes isn't always easy, and the making of the quilt from these leftovers was a challenge, trying to get my blocks the same size as hers.



In Part 1 I shared these little quilts with you. I made these with leftover units from the last quilt my Mom made and gifted them to my daughters. 




 Now I am making one for myself.  I have one more hexie flower and 4 more HSTs, along with several strips of trimmings from the piano key border Mom had assembled, so I could make one more of these little quilts.


The quilting is now farther along than this shows. About all I have left to do are the motifs in the corners.

Mom decided that the quilt she made in 2015 (when she was 85) would be her last. She called it her Happy Quilt. You can see the elements that I used to make the little quilts above.

 





Mom is a cat lover, and for her birthday about 3 years ago I made this little quilt that I had first seen on another blog. It is foundation pieced, and not as hard as it may look. I used fabrics from 4 different quilts of Mom's to make this little piece. I will only share one of them with you. 
The quilt below is the source of the fabrics in the little quilt at the top of the pile, right beneath the kitty. This is Mom's Kitty Quilt.
 
 A friend had given her yards of this kitten fabric, and she had to make something with it. I helped her come up with a block that was not quite square, to accommodate the size of the kitten panels. I have a bunch of the kitten fabric left among her "scraps".
There are bags of Mom's scraps I haven't even opened yet, so maybe someday there will be a "Part III".
Most of my sewing lately has been work on swaps I have coming up, and a very minimal effort on quilting "the beast". It really does annoy my shoulder to push that king-size thing around under the needle for very long. But it will eventually get finished--one block every week or two, maybe, but it will get finished!!
Until next time, 
Janet O.
 

Caught up--well, I was for a few hours!

It felt good to go to bed last night all caught up on my Barrister's Blocks, even though I knew as of today I would no longer be caught up. This is what I have "Sow" far in what I am calling "Barrister's Day Off".

I'm excited to be able to include some of the shirts that I picked up at the thrift store yesterday in future blocks. Oh, such wonderful colors!

My second set of blocks, made in Christmas fabrics, does not include every block. I started this set on the second group of blocks Randy posted and rather than go back I just decided to go from where we were. I also omitted making the block with the little flying geese from the recent set. I am not stressing over the Christmas set--just making what I want and being happy to have it when it is finished.

And sure enough, this morning there were four new patterns waiting for us on Randy's blog.

Something very exciting came in the mail Monday! A flying scarecrow arrived all the way from Nova Scotia! I know there were many of you who saw that I won Kaaren's giveaway--I couldn't believe it! I was the first to comment in over 100 entries and RNG chose #1!! He is so cute. Just look at him.

I told Kaaren I couldn't bear to put him away with the fall decor yet--we needed bonding time. So he will sit here, where he will be each fall, until I bring out the patriotic decor in June. If you know of Kaaren you know she does exceptional work. The detail on this is meticulous. I am honored to have him! "Thank you" seems inadequate, Kaaren!

I did get the baby quilt I was quilting finished in time for the shower--I bound it on the machine. I really enjoyed quilting this. Though it was nothing fancy, it turned out well enough, I thought. The link for this quick quilt is in my last post, if you need something in a hurry, it works up fast, but looks good.

I want to share something I did that may interest some of you FMQers. I had been told of Patsy Thompson's DVDs and free pattern downloads by more than one quilter. I purchased a couple of her DVDs and downloaded all of her free patterns. I slipped all of the pages into plastic sleeves and it filled a large looseleaf binder. It was great when I just wanted to flip through designs, but when actually quilting, it was very cumbersome and I found it hard to place it anywhere to refer to that it wasn't just in the way. My "Anne Bright" and "Leah Day" design books are spiral bound and so handy. Well, I took some of the images from Patsy's website and printed them out on coverstock, which I then had laminated (along with a blank page of coverstock for the back). I took all of the pages out of their sleeves and slipped them between the laminated covers and had them spiral bound. I am very pleased with the resulting book and have already used it.

I did the same thing with the small booklet of free designs you can print from Melody Johnson.



I did get the basket top assembled with the tiny baskets in the corners. I like it. Amazing what you can do with the leftover triangles and scraps from someone else's quilt!

I don't know how I want to quilt this, so it will have to wait until I get inspiration. Maybe that will come next month when I attend the Home Machine Quilting Show in Salt Lake City. I am so excited. I have never done anything like this before and if it weren't for the help of DH and two of his cousins, who are good friends to me, it wouldn't be happening now. I am registered for classes from Karen McTavish, Sally Terry and Pam Clarke. Can't wait!!
You still have a couple of days to get in on Doniene's Fabulous Fifteenth Fabric Freebie! She has some fresh looking red and yellow prints this time around. Good luck!
I actually get to stay home and sew this rainy Wednesday and I am excited to dig into my CW prints and get going on some gifts that are overdue, and one that soon will be. : )
Happy stitching,
Janet O.