Category: stash

H2H · quilt alongs · stash

16 Patches & Hands2Help Challenge

renegadequilter3 Comments
My friend Sarah who blogs at Confessions Of A Fabric Addict does an amazing charity quilt challenge each year.  Its the Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge and this year prior to the start of the challenge she is hosting a quilt along.  For the quilt along Sarah is having us make 16 patch blocks and then over the next several weeks she is showing us different ways to set those blocks in a quilt top.  I (think) that I have always participated in the H2H Charity Quilt Challenge and I have always enjoyed the process and paying it forward with quilts.  So when Sarah announced the quilt along I had to jump on board.


For the 16 patches I went digging through my stash.  Like many quilters out there I am trying to sew from my stash as much as possible this year.  For my first set of blocks I decided to use up some of my pinkish fabrics.  They range from the notorious paper doll fabric to some floral fabric.  LOL

Sarah’s instructions for the various methods of constructing the blocks has you using 2 1/2″ squares or strips.  The same instructions can be used for any size of squares or strips and so based on my fabric I decided to cut my strips at 4″.


These 16 patch blocks go together quickly especially when using the strips of fabric method to construct them.  I made a couple of strip sets cut them up and made some blocks to see what they looked like.


I sort of flew by the seat of my pants putting this one together.  No real plan.  I sewed up some strip sets.  Made some blocks and put them up on the design wall. 


I love my design wall.  I played around with the layout of the blocks.  I don’t have the greatest light in my sewing area but it works for an overall layout.


I decided on this for the final layout.  Just putting the blocks together side by side.  Sarah has a layout on her blog using pinwheels.  I love how the 16 patches look with the pinwheels and I think that is what I will do with the fabric below.


I got most of this fabric from a friend who was cleaning out her fabric so its fitting that it ends up in an H2H quilt.  I think that I will cut 2 1/2″ strips for this quilt.

I encourage you to hop over to Sarah’s blog and check it out.  The 16 patch blocks are fun to make and its for a great cause.  Its also a good way to sew your stash.

Happy Sewing

http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post · stash

Finished

renegadequilter5 Comments
for some crazy reason (probably because they were driving me nuts) i decided to sort & organize my scraps. by scraps i mean anything smaller then a fat quarter. i did have some sort of order to a small part of them. that order was here in these boxes.

they are boxes that some dishes came it. super cool right?

the rest of my ever growing pile resided in here. there were a few piles in some other boxes as well. so i began the sorting process. not an exciting thing to do but once i had piles everywhere it was something i had to finish before i could move onto another project. sort of forced myself to finish it. mostly i sorted by color but i did come across pieces that were left over from finished projects. like an extra block , balance of strip sets and that sort of thing. those got to reside back in one of the green boxes. i also came across some left over precuts from projects. those got to go into a green box as well. the occupants of the other 2 green boxes are my salvages & my red scraps. in my scraps i had some Hope Valley & Authentic. those are the only 2 collections that got their own separate bag & were not sorted by color. all the rest got put into piles. purples oranges & yellows blues neutral backgrounds with prints on it

browns

the largest pile of all greens. no surprise there.

i knew i wanted to re-use the large green tote that housed the mess to begin with but i needed it to be organized so i easily could find a color. i put the scraps by color into 2 gallon zip top bags. some colors took more then 1 bag. the smaller piles went into smaller bags. i wrote the color on each bag so i could easily find it without pulling out all of the bags.

next i went to my fabric closet to put it all away.

the top shelf holds the 4 green boxes as well as 2 boxes that have my flannel & pink scraps. i was surprised by the amount of pink scraps i have. must be from all the little girl stuff i make.

the rest of my closet looks like this. on the right side of the picture you can just barley see the large green tote that is full of scraps. the rest of my fabric is sorted by fat quarters, WOF under 18″ then WOF over 18″. fabric that i have purposes for is bagged together & stored in a plastic bin. i also have a dresser that i store my backing fabric, my solids & fabric that i am going to make bags out of in.

i think fabric is very pretty to look at & i would love to have it on shelves lining my sewing room walls. however, light is fabrics worst enemy & i don’t sew fast enough to use it up to have it displayed all of the time. so it gets tucked away from the light. when i go looking for something its like Christmas because i do forget what i have. it is also motivating for me as well.

now that i am finished with that project i can get back to my machine.

“what i want is what i’ve not got…. what i need is all around me.”