0 scrap eater {a finished quilt}

I finished my Scrap Eater quilt. Fun, isn't it? And just like the name suggests I only used scraps to make this quilt top.

I used this wonderful tutorial to make my blocks (they each finished at 12" x 12") and I absolutely love that even though I used scraps of every size and color, the finished quilt still looks cohesive - well, sort of crazily cohesive but I think it works :)

Here it is during basting stage. Oh, I do love a perfectly flat, zero wrinkles, freshly basted quilt top very much indeed.

My plan at first was to do an all over spiral quilting like I did on this quilt a while back. After just a few minutes of pretty poor quilting and wrestling this beast I decided to scrap that plan and rip out all the stitches ... plan b, continuous eights to the rescue :)

My eights are about 4" tall and I was happy to see that even after washing and drying this quilt stayed pretty flat. Last time I tried this quilting pattern I made my eights smaller and a lot denser which probably caused the quilt to crinkle up more than I'd prefer.

I used this beautiful lime (and blue) giant dots Marimekko fabric for the backing. And since I live close to Crate and Barrel outlet store I bought it at an incredible sale price of $3.98 a yard !!!!

I couldn't choose just one fabric for the binding so I copied my quilting hero Amanda Jean and went scrappy. I think it adds just the right finishing touch.

The quilt finished at 72" x 72". And yes, I still have tons of scraps left over, but on that next time :)

Wishing you all a very lovely weekend. Svetlana

Detail: scrap eater {a finished quilt}

0 scrappy stacked coins

When I first started making this little quilt I wanted to simply join lots of scrappy strips together and turn them into this kind of quilt. After I finished just a few blocks though, it all looked like such a disorganized mess I knew it was time for plan B - Kona Snow to the rescue. I recut the colored strips and used Kona Snow to calm things down and bring much needed order to the quilt.

I then used big strips of no longer loved fabrics for the backing. I find this to be a good way to use up that fabric that no longer sings to me yet I don't feel good about simply getting rid of it. You know what I mean, right? I'm sure we all have quite a few of those fabrics in our stash. (and Rachel has tons of great ideas on what to make with all that no longer loved fabric on her blog if you're interested)

I was out of 505 spray when I finished this quilt top so I decided to pin baste it. All I can say I will try very hard not to run out of basting spray ever again. I did not enjoy poking all those pins through the layers at all. To top it all off, I kept getting ginormous puckers when trying to machine quilt it. 

So, I decided hand quilting was the only reasonable way to go, unless I wanted to re-baste the quilt which I did not want to do at all :) Oh, how I love those big chunky stitches. I'm actually  glad about all the changes I had to make along the way and I'm pretty sure I like this second version of the quilt a lot better than the one I started with :)

 Thanks for reading, friends. Have a very lovely day. Svetlana

Detail: scrappy stacked coins

0 playtime

 Hello, happy Sunday!

I hope your weekend is going well and you're getting some time to play as well as rest. I'm having a ridiculously wonderful time with tons of scraps, lots of low volume fabrics, and Denyse Schmidt's Single Girl.

This was my design wall on Friday night. I know, it looks like my sewing induced ADD is back. I so love all the four projects I started over the last few days but it was time to decide to work on just one since there's no more room on my design wall.

I started my Single Girl quilt after seeing Jolene's amazing, gorgeously scrappy version. I could not help it, I simply HAD TO shamelessly copy get inspired and start my own.

I decided to go randomly scrappy, so there's no order to my color placement. And boy is it fun!!! I don't think I have ever enjoyed working on a quilt this much before (and I do love quilting). It's probably all those tons of scraps and other happy fabrics (Jamie, thanks for the beautiful zig zags) that make me giddy with excitement every time I look at them.

As of right now, I'm about half way done with piecing. I decided to go with  a 3 x 3 blocks layout, which will make for a very nice lap sized quilt.

OK, off to get some more sewing done.

Linking up to Chase's weekending. Hope you'll stop by her blog and see what she, and others, have been up to this weekend. I'm sure you'll love all her amazing scrappy creations, she's a master, as well as her beautifully colorful Single Girl quilt she finished a few days ago. Or, even better, why don't you write up a post about your Weekending and link up?

Detail: playtime