Janet's Creations

Janet's Creations
Gemma's "I Spy" hexagon quilt

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Crazy Magic Patch Block

As all quilters know,  that if you are saving scraps eventually they become unmanageable and need to be tamed.
Having no UFO's (unfinished projects) from the 2012 quilting year,
I was determined to conquer and beat down my scrap bin and upright box that were overflowing with beautiful pieces of previous quilts.
My guild gave out a pattern called Magic Square scrappy
quilts in my first year here in the USA and I have made quite a
few of these quilts.  They go together easily and quickly - my quilting bestie brought over her scraps also ( but that is another story)
and I started on mission.
I made 5 - yes 5 quilts from mostly my scraps with a
smattering of Clara's scraps thrown in.  It took approximately 3.5 weeks
from cutting the strips. to sewing, ironing, resewing, cutting, piecing, sandwiching with Elmer's Washable School glue, FMQ and
machine binding.  I used variegated thread to add another element of dimension to the quilts.
I will be giving Clara's and my guild two quilts -  as our donation for our charity quilts, 1 quilt to Clara for her use, one to my sister in Calgary for use at her family cabin in northern Saskatchewan, and I kept one for myself to remind me of all the other beautiful quilts I have made.
The two charity quilts were backed with some chintz-like cotton fabric that I had bought at the thrift store for $10.00 a bolt.  These will be the cozier and sturdier as the polyester batting I used turned out to be thinner than I anticipated.  No more Morning Glory Polyester batting from Walmart for me.  The heftier backing made be feel a lot better about the quilt.
I also zigzag pieced batting for my quilt. It will be interesting to see how it fairs as I had about 5 different battings in it - I figured it was for me so what the heck!  Clara's quilt has a bamboo batting that she supplied and the other one was a 80/20 Walmart batting I had used before.
 The above box is as tall as my elevated sewing center and about 2 feet square, below is a huge tote all of scraps from my quilts.  I have even mailed scraps away to total strangers that asked for some!
Below are the 5 different quilts and the last picture is a close up of the work.