My main design wall is bare today.  I finished quilting Checkerboard Plaid Saturday (finished the quilt, binding and pillowcase before the book I was listening to) which is what I’m showing today.  I took a picture of it hanging, but the lighting was terrible and it was hanging funny.  But I have to say I’m impressed the with holding talents of my niece and her fiance.

The quilt is Checkerboard Plaid from Evelyn Sloppy’s 40 Fabulous Quick-Cut Quilts.  Most, but not all of the plaids are from recycled shirts. There are a couple of homespuns in the mix because when I started the quilt I didn’t have the shirts that I have now. The off white is a muslin bought/given to my mom in about 1991/1992.

It is quilted simply 1/4″ on either side of each seam (click on the picture to see the quilting).

It’s bound in a dark green “marble” type print I bought at Hancock fabrics around 2005.  The backing is a 60″ wide tiny windowpane.  I ended up with a whole bolt of if in 2008 for about $15.

In addition to the quilt I made a coordinating pillowcase.  The body is the backing, the wide portion of the cuff is the back of a shirt (there’s some of that fabric in the quilt as well) and the narrow band is Luninosity Prismaglass in Red.

Quilt Statistics

• Top Started 10/14/12
• Top Completed 10/28/12
• Quilting Started 3/25/13
• Quilting Finished, Bound, Labeled and Washed 3/30/13
• Measures 67″ x 81″
• Warm and Natural Batting
• Quilted on my DSM
• Superior Omni Thread – Light Tan in top and bottom
• 11 1/4 yards fabric for quilt and pillowcase

To see what others have on their design walls, hop over to Patchwork Times.

This week I’ve got both fabric in and fabric out — which actually made it into a quilt — not just passed to someone else!

The inbound fabric is pictured on the post from Friday.  The outbound fabric is the backing, binding, and pillowcase for Checkerboard Plaids, plus the floral blocks I made to complete the floral top.  I really need a better name for that quilt.

So, the numbers are as follows:

Fabric Added Since Last Report: 14.0 yards
Fabric Added to Date: 80.11 yards

Fabric Used Since Last Report: 6.363 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 23.141  yards

Net Used for the year -56.97 yards

Looks like I’m just short of being on track for using 100 yards of fabric this year.

To see how others are doing check out the links over at Patchwork Times.

No, this is not the same picture as the last post.  In this post all the blocks are sewn together.  The top is currently 48″ x 60″. I guess really that is a good size for a throw and I don’t know if border wouldn’t just look like I was trying to make it bigger.

So, I may just call this a top.

Sure enough it was quick enough to make 5 blocks.  I think this is the arrangement I’m going to use.  But first, it’s time to put the binding on Checkerboard Plaids.

Last weekend my quilting buddies went to a quilt retreat.  I had to stay home and work.  🙁  But it wasn’t a total disappointment.  One of the quilt shops they stopped at had  “scrap bags”.  They bought several bags and then divided up the fabric, bringing me what is pictured above.  🙂

With the exception of one FQ in the bottom row, everything is full width, including one piece which is 120″ wide.  There are a couple of pieces which are 5 or 6 inches long, but most are in the 9 – 12 inch range.  One of the red pieces is a yard long and the bundle on the right consists of 3 pieces totaling 3 yards! And to think this is “scrap”!

The scraps above the full cuts range from strings, to 9″ squares.  The white fabric on the top left looks like it excess backing.

I can’t wait to start playing with this fabric.  But first, I’ve got a quilt to finish.  I’m 3/4 of the way through the quilting and with the help of my quilting buddies have picked a binding and a pillowcase cuff – all from my stash.

These floral blocks which I found yesterday (and added to my UFO count!) got me inspired to figure out how to get this into a quilt top.  I have a whole box of florals that I tend to ignore.  So, this evening I pulled floral prints,  pink and lavender tone on tones and some white on white fabric.

With a few minutes (ok, perhaps an hour – had to pet the fabric) I now have 5 blocks kitted and ready to stitch.   Will this become a quilt top before April 15th?  Only time will tell.

Now back to my book on CD and quilting Checkerboard Plaids.  A few more 8 more passes then I’m half way done.

Earlier this week Judy challenged her readers to a UFO Parade — Essentially, find all of your UFOs and make a list to show to the world (or at least the blog readers)  on April 15th.  I thought, smugly, that I knew how many UFOs I had and what state they were in.  I track them in a spreadsheet and I track them on my ‘Quilts In Progress‘ tab.

Last night I pulled down all of the project boxes from the top shelf.

Only one surprise in these boxes.

Mom’s JoAnn Sampler.  It’s not been started, so in my world that makes it a Kit and not a UFO.  I’ve struck it off my Quilts in Progress tab.

Then it was on to the bin of projects.

This one held surprises.  Do you see the box in the box?  This box was given to me a by a friend.  I had briefly looked at the contents, but never really inventoried them.

Last night I did.

There were 4 projects in that box.

A top which just needs borders.

A set of log cabin blocks from a swap.

A few purple blocks:

A bunch of floral blocks.

My Quilts In Progress tab has been updated.   I wonder if I can strike something off the list before the 15th?

Here it is.  My young quilting friend’s Spongebob quilt for her little cousin.  I think the cousin is 2.  She was so excited when she saw Spongebob. At 43″ square, the quilt is almost twice as long as she is tall so she’ll have it for a while.

During DWTS I sandwiched the Checkerboard Plaid quilt. I turned off Castle (which I enjoy) and put the quilt under the needle to get started.  I must be crazy. I’ve decided to stitch on either side of all the seams. That’s 10 seams a block and the quilt has 30 blocks — so that’s 50 lines vertically and 60 across the width.  When I took this picture had stitched  6 1/2 horizontal lines.

I wonder which will happen first — I finish the quilting or the new book I started listening to will finish.  I’m listening to A Proper Pursuit by Lynn Austin.  One CD = 16 horizontal lines of stitching, 1 + bobbins and cleaning the bobbin area out once.

The muslin and shirts are generating a lot of fuzz. (I’m using Superior’s Omni Thread in Light Tan on the top and in the bobbin – Warm and Natural batting).

There is nothing on the wall this morning.  This past week my young quilting friend spent most of her spring break with us and she finally got her quilt top finished and quilted.  It’s still in the binding stage – I ended up working for 2 hours late last night instead of getting the binding finished.

The middle picture is what my sister is working on.  This is her first traditional quilt and half of the blocks.  She spent a couple of hours over here Saturday cutting orange rectangles for the rest of the quilt.

Finally something I did (and I think the only thing I did all week).  I made the backing and cut the batting for Checkerboard Plaid.

Hop over to Patchwork Times to see other design walls.

This letting others use my stash is working well for me.  Yesterday my sister was over cutting 2″ x 3 1/2″ rectangles from my orange collection.  She ended up cutting more than she needed.  I told her to keep the rest.  So, I’m counting that fabric as out, along with the blue and yellow she cut the week before.

Then my young quilting friend finished her Spongebob top. Most of the top fabric came from my stash.  The backing is from her stash — which fortunately still fits in a “shirt box”.

But their usage offset my purchases from yesterday.  Also helping is the fact that I finished the Stacked Posies quilt.

Well — this is interesting.  My numbers last week were “weird”.  It’s because I have a separate column for my recycled fabrics in.  Last week I must have only grabbed the purchased # for my report.  These number are correct.

Fabric Added Since Last Report: 4.0 yards
Fabric Added to Date: 66.11 yards

Fabric Used Since Last Report: 8.687 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 16.778  yards

Net Used for the year -49.333 yards

Other stash reports can be seen over at Patchwork Times.