Serendipity Super Scrappy Strippy Quilt

I didn’t come up with a name for this quilt and one with alliteration until after it was a finally finished and ready for some pics and a boast post. Since starting the Serendipity Super Scrappy Strippy Quilt (S4) back in September and just finishing it yesterday, I realized there was a lot of unplanning and fortunate occurrences with this quilt which started with Demando moving out and leaving his queen size IKEA bed behind and it needing a quilt. 

During this time, I was working on my Tell Tale Blues Quilt and had staggered strip quilts on my mind and knew I had a lot of 2-1/2” scraps leftover from making these type of quilts and other quilts which I could use to make the S4 quilt which would go with the blue bedroom walls. Since these leftovers had teal and aqua in them, I kept them in my bin of aqua/teal fabrics and were reminded of them whenever I happened to be searching in that bin. 

These scraps are mostly from the above four quilts all made in 2018: The Hinto Minto Baby Quilt, Stacked Squares Quilt, Echinacea Dream and Spa Spurts Quilt. I remember the color inspiration for these quilts which were the Delilah blocks Susan Snooks, Patchwork and Play was making at this time. We both loved Anna Marie Horner’s Echinacea Glow fabric in the Pretty Potent color way which included teal and peachy pinks. Not to throw Susan under the bus which I am known for doing to her, is that I was going to link her quilt but could not find it on her blog, since she does not have a photo gallery of all the wonderful quilts she had made and she should. I may be receiving a reply or clarification from her, I think.

Some of the scraps were leftover strip sets and some were 2-1/2” strips and they were sewn together to make a very long strip of two 2-1/2” rows sewn together which were then subcut them into two strip set panel sizes: 20-1/2” and 40-1/2”.

The 40-1/2” strip set panels are in the middle flanked by a 20-1/2” panel on each side. It was an easy make and the flimsy was finished around the middle of September and has been waiting to be quilted since then which at that time I was starting to have problems with Juki Junebug.

Well, Juki Junebug has been replaced with Jinny Janome, my new 1600P, who was waiting to machine quilt one of the many flimsies that have accumulated during the past few years. I was not planning for S4 to be her inaugural quilt and was going to quilt one of the Lotta Jansdotter flimsies from last year but Serendipity/Senior moment struck as I was putting away some fabrics in my aqua/teal bin and was wondering where my leftover strips and strip sets were. I spent some time looking around my studio to see where I could have stored them, were they stuck in a bin with other low volume scraps or were they put aside on the project shelf for a new quilt? I couldn’t find them for at least 15 minutes which was annoying since I rather be sewing than searching. I happened to go by the cart which had flimsies waiting to be quilted and there I saw S4 and realized that I had forgotten that I made this. It’s been four months and like they say, how soon we forget, which is happening a lot with my quilt brain. I knew S4 would be the perfect quilt to test Jinny Janome with since I planned on doing both straight line and wavey lines. Fortunately the Janome open toe walking foot I used on Juki Junebug could be used on Jinny Janome. On a side note, my Juki walking foot which is a closed toe and came with the machine could not be used on Jinny Janome which I needed in order to sew the binding down. I made do with the Janome walking foot and had to use another way to maintain a 1/4” stitch line.

Jinny Janome quilted wonderfully and you can see I played a little quilt chicken on one of the corners of S4 which I did’t noticed after I was almost finished with pin basting. I crossed my fingers and hoped that the machine quilting would not push the top past the batting. I think it helped that before I started machine quilting with Jinny Janome, I moved Juki Junebug upstairs because I know bad quilt karma happens when she’s upset, especially now that she’s second banana. Juki Junebug is at the Spa getting her latest problems fixed and will be moving to the GP house where she sew supreme once again.

Here are some pics showing the wonderful scraps of mostly Cotton+Steel and Art Gallery fabrics along with text prints. I especially love the cat prints. The backing was from the vault and was a wide back print purchased at a nice discount from Amazon several years ago. It’s not as modern as the front but I’m saving my Carrie Bloomston wide back text print for another quilt, not yet made but in my head. I used a CT Essenial Thread in Parchment and the binding was the teal XOXO print by Cotton+ Steel. S4 measures 80”x90” which was pretty large to test Jinny Janome with but I was confident that she could do it. As much as I love my Juki Junebug and already owning a Janome Gem for over ten years, I knew Janome is a pretty good and reliable brand.

One of the reasons why I finished hand sewing the binding while we were at the GP House this weekend was because I knew the Master Quilt Holder (MQH) would need some help holding it up. Also, we left right before a big snow storm and was lucky it didn’t follow us which would have interrupted photo taking. When the flimsy was finished, Demando, also affectionately know as the Apprentice Quilt Holder was still at home and was able to assist MQH. My youngest son and father of the darling granddaughter lives next door at the GP House was able to assist and now will be referred to as the Rookie Quilt Holder. Even though this was his first time assisting, he listened and followed his father’s example and with no lip or complaining as the Apprentice Quilt Holder is known to do. 

The darling Granddaughter was taking a nap during photo taking so I thought I would close this Post with the Serendipity Super Scrappy Strippy Quilt in the foyer and her baby photos in the background. I really enjoy making another quilt using my Staggered Strips and Squares pattern but this time without any squares or rectangles. If you’re not familiar with this pattern, you can check out my “sort-of” tutorial on how I make the staggered strips Here.

January is finally living up to its reputation as we’re experiencing cold at the GP house and we’ll be heading back to more cold as in freezing temperatures along with snow. The only good thing about this is that it is good sewing weather. Now I need a cup of hot tea just thinking about it and wishing warmer days will be coming soon.

Linking up with:My Quilt Infatuation/NTT

Sharing and Merrily QAL-ing This Week

It's been a busy and productive week for me which should be expected when you promise to write a tutorial and also are participating in three QALs.

Last week, I posted my Hinto Minto Baby Quilt (you can read about it here) and mentioned that the next time I made this pattern I would write a tutorial.  I thought the better of myself so I did a sort of tutorial now than later while the pattern was still fresh in my mind and I had some leftover fabrics to recreate part of the tutorial.  I wanted to share this pattern so you can see how easy and fun it was to make this quilt. (you can see it here, The Staggered Strips & Squares Sort Of Tutorial)

And here are some updates for my QAL-ings:

My Whitewater River Rafting Quilt, a.k.a. the Regatta Quilt Along, (you can read about it here), top is finished and I hope to quilt it next month.  It was nice to make this quilt with Amy Ellis' Modern Neutral fabrics leftover from another quilt and with Marcus Bros Aged Muslin in denim blue.

The Classic Meets Modern QAL hosted by My Quilt Infatuation, (you can read about it here) started this week and I completed the first two blocks, the 24" Bethlehem Star and the 12" Antique Tile using Zen Chic's Figures fabric. Knowing that I'm a strips and squares kind of quilter, I bet you can guess which one of these two blocks was my favorite to make and took less than an hour while the other one took me over three hours and gave me the angle-challenged quilter an exercise on staying focus.  I only had to use the seam ripper three times.  I'm looking forward to making the other blocks and it's going to be an interesting quilt.

The Squiggles QAL hosted by Christa Watson also started this week, (you can read about it here)  and fabric choosing and preparation was the goal. I've chosen to use my stash of Blueberry Park fabrics and you can see I already started making some of the blocks.

So far in January, I'm doing well on my project list but not for long since I'll be traveling starting next week, hopefully to a warm spot.  I'm going to try to tackle one more project on my list and then  decide on a hand project for the road before we leave.  I don't know why I always wait until the last moment to decide this when this trip has been planned for awhile.  I should have put it on my project list.

I hope you're having a great January and are staying warm.  I will say this cold weather we're experiencing in the Midwest is great for staying home to sew.

First Finally Finished for 2018--The Hinto Minto Baby Quilt

Less than ten days into the new year and I have my first quilt finally finished for 2018 and what made it so easy to accomplish was that it was a baby quilt and a pattern that I just love.  As the way the quilt weather works, just when I 'm ready to take photos of this quilt, the sun goes away and foggy weather comes to visit, which means the photos had to be taken indoor.  It makes an otherwise happy quilt look rather gloomy.

This quilt was made for soon-to-be parents, the father being a son of someone I knew since fifth grade and my first memory of her was that she, being somewhat intimidating since she was way taller than me, jumped out of her seat to block me from going to the cloakroom and asked me where did I think I was going.  If I had the power to look into my quilt future I could have told her right then that she might want to rethink her actions because I would be making a baby quilt for her granddaughter in 50+ years.  Instead, as I would relay the story to her sons, I ran back screaming to my desk. Flash forward to almost 50 years later, I met up with my intimidator who was working at the quilt shop I happened to be visiting from out-of-town and as the story goes, she wouldn't leave me alone, kept asking me all of these questions and I was trying to shop. I gave her short and curt answers until I realized she and I went to the same high school and graduated the same year and when she told me her then name, it was reunion time.  It's sort of ironic she was preventing me from shopping, isn't it, but it was a good thing this time.  That was the start of our "being nice" friendship and even though she lives six hours away, we have included each other in our family celebrations over the past years.  I would like to mention that I am at least four inches taller than her now.

Enough of the background story which I had to share and now to this quilt which the parents-to-be requested a gray and white quilt with a hint of mint, thus the name Hinto Minto Quilt which I'm pretty sure it's going to be renamed. As mentioned previously, I just love this quilt and it came together so nicely since I had all of the fabric in my stash.  I wanted to showcase the gray large letter by Art Gallery and the mint green Cotton + Steel fabrics so I came up with a pattern inspired by two other quilts I've made:  Jelly Roll Charm Chase (you can see it here) and the Blue Ernie Stash Dash Quilt (you can see it here).  I love the look of staggered strips and my favorite way to achieve this look is doing the first two laps of a Jelly Roll Race Quilt.  I sewed approximately fifty 20" long strips, which is way more than enough,  in various lengths and once they were all sewn together, I then sew it together like you would for a jelly roll race quilt.  This where the similarities end because I then cut the strip set in various widths and when sewn with the squares and rectangles, it made a forty-inch wide row.  (I'm going to be making another quilt like this with black and white Cotton+Steel fabrics and will make sure I write a Staggered Squares and Strips tutorial so I can share this easy pattern).   A fun touch to this quilt is the father-to-be is an IT executive and I was glad to include a rectangle that had the word "user" while I think some of the other fabrics might appeal to the mother-to-be who works in the Arts.  As you can see by the photos above, there were some spots where the seams or the same fabrics just happened to meet like a jelly roll race.  Also, you will see that I quilted with soft wavy lines along the seams of the rows which added to the easiness of making this quilt.

I backed the quilt with a medium dark gray dot fabric and the binding is a light gray gingham check, all from my stash.  The Hinto Minto Quilt will soon be leaving for California and just in time for the February delivery.  I'll have to check with the Grandmother as to how it should be sent.

I must have been a really nice girl back in my school days seeing that I never received a baby quilt made by someone in the past when I became a Grandmother last year but then again I did win quite a few free quilt patterns and four fabric giveaways in 2017.  Just purely coincidental, I say.  I think there are those of us who wear their halos well.

Hope you're having a great week too and also since it's been snow long, you're enjoying some warm weather.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation, Thursday Needle and Thread, Crazy Mom's Finish It Up Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Can I Get A Whoop Whoop Friday, and Busy Hands Quilts, Finish or Not Friday