Welcome to the Jungle

I wrote the blog post below long, long ago, before I finished all of the projects mentioned. Then I forgot I had written this post and wrote new ones as I finished projects. I almost deleted this when I stumbled upon it. I didn't have anything better to publish today, so I might as well take a fun and memorable step back in time!

Before I began piecing together the lime green batik remnants of my treasured bag, skirt and dress, my goal was to use up a good portion of my leftover stash. I've always had great difficulty throwing away pieces of fabric that might be big enough to make into something. Some day.

My remnants stash has overgrown its boundaries many times over. It was time to make a dent in it.

2011 green batik stash

2025 green batik stash and leftovers

As I began working on Welcome to the Jungle, I began running out of some of my favorite bright lime green batiks. I caved and bought two more yards because every quarter block has at least four different bright lime green batiks. As I began working on the French braid border (my first pieced border ever), I began running out of the darker and lighter green batiks.

Oh, was I tempted to buy more!

The day I began cutting the strips for the main squares, Lizard asked if I was making another dress. Oh, the inspiration that swirled through my entire core! I could make a dress of the strips! It would be beautiful!

Now I was running out of everything, and I wouldn't have enough left over to make yet one more dress.

I had to give myself a time out to prevent me from shopping for more lime green batik.

The purpose of Welcome to the Jungle was to use up remnants! To make them go away. To completely run out. To not have enough left over to make anything else.

After a bit of attitude adjustment, I realized I could do the strip dress from purple batiks. Or turquoise batiks. While making this quilt, I kept thinking how much fun it would be to do another one, different pattern, with purples. Or blues.

And yet, each week when I receive an email ad announcing new fabrics in stock, I find myself drawn to luscious new lime green batiks. Again, and again, and again. And again...

My next quilting project goal was to finish Leaf Me Alone, also inspired by dress remnants. My sister-in-law's admiration for the leaf quilt pushed me to finish it before Welcome to the Jungle.

Now, Welcome to the Jungle takes front and center. It must be finished in time for the Denver National Quilt Festival. (2025 Edit: Which ended about a decade ago...) Then comes fun. Then comes sewing and quilting without deadlines.

The next project I wanted to do after Welcome to the Jungle and Leaf me alone was a scrap happy quilt. To use up even more remnants. To make them go away. To completely run out. To not have enough left over to make anything else.

At which point, I can begin using stash fabric that had never been cut.

I have so much stash, I can make a new dress without buying a thing except maybe a zipper or button. By making a new dress, I might ignite new dress-remnant quilt inspirations. I might replenish my remnant stash. Without buying a thing.

Sigh. How much of this will actually get accomplished while bright lime green fabrics continue to call out to me so loudly?!?

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One Row Short

(affiliate links to my designs)

I got about two months into my 2024 digital snowflake temperature quilts when I realized I had not made them big enough to record the entire year. I was able to add rows to most of this year's projects, and a few will go into January.

I must have forgotten to add a row onto the batik digital temperature quilt because it's done now. Although I wish I had added that extra row or two, it's not that bad as is. And it's delightful to be done with one. I've had difficulty keeping up with the digital projects this year, thanks to changing life circumstances. But I'm on the home stretch. Just two more months of 2024, and then maybe a few days of 2025. I may take a temperature quilt break next year. Temperature quilts are so much fun and so visually stimulating, but they can also be such a chore!

Here we go again! I decided last night to add one more row to two sides, which means my 2024 digital temperature quilt daily pressure has not changed!!! But, perhaps this will change the batik project up a bit and give it a whole new look...

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Mending without Spending

I need to cheer three times because I finished three projects during the three-day weekend! All three are from my mending pile instead of my WIP list, but I'm making progress, slow but steady, in finishing things that have needed to be done, some for a decade or more.

First up was a very short stack of various batik layer cake leftovers I thought could make a good quilt or quilt back in a bind. This stack has been on my sewing table (which sometimes doubles as a dining room table, ha ha) for at least a couple of years. My mending pile has sojourned right next to these layer cake remnants, so I've always considered the blocks part of the mending pile. The scrappy layer cake has grown a bit in the last two years until it finally contained 12 blocks, which is my own definition of perfect for a kid quilt layout.

Somewhere along the line, I bought a half-price jelly roll, thinking that would make perfect sashing for this leftovers project. When I finally sat down to work out a layout, I found I wasn't very happy with two of the 10-inch squares, and I found out why the jelly roll was on sale. I didn't like it too much at all.

I ended up cutting out three more 10-inch blocks from my batik stash, then incorporating leftover batik strips I cut myself back when I was designing batik jelly roll quilts for my grands. I also threw in a few blocks from a sale charm pack I picked up who knows how long ago. I LOVED the charm pack, but there were only 24 blocks, so not really enough to make a quilt. Using the squares in this project helped me feel like at least one sale precut I bought was worth the price!

I'm thinking this might be an excellent quilt backing. It could be a quilt front, too, but I promised I would not create any new quilts until I finish a few more WIPs. I can even make this flimsy bigger by adding more of my home-cut batik strip leftovers around the edges if I need to, perhaps even creating a fancy border.

Next up is the dress I intended to wear to my niece Lyndsie's wedding. Back in 2016!!! Lyndsie actually gave birth to her second son last week, and I have a pretty nice little stash of finished kid quilts now, so I was able to get one off in the mail the day after my new grand nephew arrived instead of spending the three-day weekend making another baby quilt.

I bought this border-edged rayon batik even further back than Lyndsie's wedding, perhaps in 2010, at the now-defunct Denver National Quilt Festival. Oh, how I fell in love with the fabric!!! Total impulse purchase! I bought three yards, because it was wide, thinking that would be enough for a dress. I finally began the dress perhaps a month prior to Lyndsie's wedding... I typically can finish most dresses in one day. But no, not this one... I did not have enough fabric for both the bodice top and back.

I can't remember how long it took me to find a nearly matching rayon batik so long after I bought that original fabric. I do remember I didn't find it in time for the wedding. So I had to wear something else on that special day.

What I bought doesn't truly match, so I ended up cutting both bodice parts from the additional fabric (and sending the original bodice piece to the scrap stash), hoping the dress wouldn't look too bad with the top of the dress made from a different fabric than the bottom.

I can't remember why I didn't put the top and bottom together when I finished cutting them out, but it's possible the timing coincided with 15 quilts for my new grandkids for Christmas! A very worthy distraction! Oh, and in looking up that significant event, I discovered that's also the time period when my 34-year-old beloved Viking Husqvarna finally gave up the ghost. I distinctly remember that unfortunate event putting all kinds of delays into all quilting, sewing and mending projects. The dress got buried by one more mending project after another, until I couldn't even see what was on the bottom of the stack and until I bought a new, very inexpensive sewing machine, a Brother Project Runway (approximately three years ago). Last weekend I began deconstructing the mending pile to discover why it had grown so tall and what secrets it held.

I thought perhaps I may have procrastinated finishing the dress because facings are not my favorite thing to do, particularly when I blind-stitch tack them down by hand. I don't remember even putting the top of this dress together, but, lo and behold, I did. I also don't remember crocheting (and installing) the loop I planned to use for the back button, which I no longer have (at least in a location I might think to look). Thankfully, my button stash included a suitable button that fit the crocheted loop, and half an hour later, my dress was done!

Last but not least, the mending pile included two pairs of bike shorts. One needs a new chamois. Cheaper than buying a new pair of cycling shorts. But doing a project like that by hand (which is how I began... 15 years ago!!!), obviously convinced me I'd be better off buying a new pair of spandex shorts. The second pair of bike shorts in the stack needed the chamois tacked to the shorts because each washing resulted in serious slippage and very uncomfortable rides. I tried my hand at this pair using my sewing machine and learned why the first pair of shorts was being done by hand. Those chamois pads are not the easiest things to sew, by hand OR by machine!!! Nevertheless, my stash of cycling shorts now is one pair richer without a single dime being spent.

Linking up with Alycia Quilts.

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QAYG Scrap Gobbler Tutorial

Two years ago tomorrow, I decided I needed to use up my green scraps. I started what I then called QAYG Scrap Gobbler. Somewhere between then and now, I forgot about that name and resorted to calling it my Green Batik Leftovers Quilt-As-You-Go. Now that the quilt is finished, I've rediscovered and reclaimed the original name because I really like it!

I posted progress photos of my scrappy project in online scrappy quilt groups back during Safer at Home mostly for social opportunities but also because I thought the project was turning out pretty cool. I received quite a bit of positive feedback, including tutorial requests and even a collaboration offer by another quilter to write a children's story about each block. (Yes, I still think that would be a fabulous idea!!!) I got the main 12 blocks finished and then didn't get back to the project until recently. Now that the quilt is finished, I guess I probably ought to try to do at least a basic tutorial because this quilt did turn out rather awesome, and it's such a great use of scraps.

When I first came up with this idea, I cut a dozen 12-inch blocks from my solid green stash. I then raided my green batik scraps, which came from projects such as my first green batik skirt, my first green batik dress and my first green batik bag. Leftovers from those projects resulted in Welcome to the Jungle, and leftovers from that were used to create green batik shorts, my second green batik dress, Pieces of Braid, Orphan Vortex, my first ticker tape quilt, Square Robin, Scrappy Block-a-Day, my second ticker tape quilt and Lizard Toes. And now, this quilt.

I machine-appliquéd scraps onto most of the blocks, leaving the rough edges for a fun fringy texture as the quilt ages. Two of the blocks were pieced. I didn't use a pattern for any of the blocks. I just let my imagination run wild.

After determining block placement, I added borders to all of the blocks but one. Six of the 12-inch blocks (the first two blocks of the first three rows) were bordered on two sides with scrap-made 2.5-inch strips, with a 2.5-inch solid green square (also from the green scrap box) on each corner. Three of the 12-inch blocks (the third blocks of the first three rows) got a similar border across the bottom. Two blocks (the first two blocks of the fourth row) got a border on the side. One block (the third block of the fourth row) got no border. (In looking at the two-year-old photo now, I see I put two borders on the bottom middle block and no border on the first block on the bottom row - and now I remember why I did it that way; see * below - but the end result works out the same.)

I sandwiched each block with batting leftovers and jewel-toned fat quarters I earned via Ravelry's quarterly WIP challenge. The fat quarters were cut to fit the blocks. (Which, yes, I know, created even more scraps... sigh.)

I quilted each block, again letting my imagination run wild. I tried to leave roughly an inch all the way around each block unstitched to make sewing the quilted blocks together a little easier.

I machine-sewed the blocks together into rows of three using only the top layer, batting and one side of the backing, pinning the remaining backing away from the stitching so as to not accidentally catch any edges in the seams. I then stitched the top two and bottom two rows together using the same method, then stitched the two quilt halves together.

In rectrospect, I could have machine stitched through all the layers to fasten down the final backing fabric, but I enjoy the hand-stitching and love the finished look.

I folded and pinned the backing into place and hand-sewed each seam. I thought it was ready to be bound.

I held the unbound quilt up to see how well it would cover me. At 38 inches by 49 inches, it wasn't quite big enough, in my opinion. At the time, I thought I could enlarge it a bit by making more scrappy 2.5-inch strips, sandwiching them, quilting them, then adding them all the way around. Three things happened that prevented me from focusing on the project again for nearly two years. I decided 2.5-inch QAYG strips would be too squirrely. That lone un-bordered block wasn't the right size, and I didn't want to take apart that final row and make another block the right size. And, most importantly, my husband had emergency surgery. I became a full-time caregiver, and I decided to put the project away until I could be green batikly creative again.

During that nearly two-year break, I would sometimes stew about how to fix and finish the quilt during sleepless nights. I considered adding another row of blocks on one side and across the bottom. That would definitely use up more scraps!!! I thought about making the outside border bigger than two and a half inches. The more I visualized that idea, the more I liked the it, especially as the imaginary border in my head grew in size as I pondered. I finally decided to go with a ten-inch piano key border all the way around because I had (what I thought was) plenty of self-cut 2-inch and 2.5-inch batik strips, and I had a few bold batik layer cake leftovers I could use as backing. I ended up having to cut a few more strips from my green batik stash, but I did fairly well and wound up with just a few unused pieces when the quilt was finally done.

I worked up three of the borders and got them attached (except for the hand-stitching) before we visited my mother-in-law for a week. I finished up the hand-sewing while there and fully intended to finish that final border and the hand-sewing and binding last weekend. BUT... the lunar eclipse got in the way. Ha ha!

Yes, both photos are real. I photographically captured the perfectly silhouetted deer on the hillside a couple of weeks ago, and I digitally stitched that photo and one of my eclipse photos together to make a greeting card. But now it's time to get back to that quilt...

For the borders, I cut my leftover 2- and 2.5-inch strips into 10-inch segments and randomly pieced them to fit the two long sides of the quilt, trying to make sure I didn't have duplicates too close together. I sandwiched and quilted the two side borders, again leaving about an inch on either side unstitched, then attached the strips in the same method as I joined the blocks and rows. I then repeated the process to create borders long enough to fit the top and bottom of the quilt, then used strip scraps to create four 10-inch log cabin corners. (I even used scraps to make some of the inch-or-so-too-short border strips long enough!

I must have been half asleep or super stressed when I finished the quilt block that didn't fit and the final border section. Each was significantly short and already quilted. Both were fixed by adding strip fabric and batting remnants along the edge. Not picture perfect, but both saved me from picking out the quilting.

I also found an acid hole in one of the batik strips as I was quilting. I couldn't undo everything at that point to replace the strip, so I top-stitched on yet another appliqué patch (which I plucked from the scrap box without even looking) as I quilted. I think it adds personality to the quilt.

Finishing the borders gave me such liberation!

* While I was pinning the final border section, I realized why I did that weird middle bottom block the way I did, with borders on two sides. The backing fabric is my favorite fabric of the entire quilt, and I wanted to use every inch of it I could. I don't remember who sent me that fat quarter as my reward for finishing a quilt so many years ago, but, oh, how thankful I am for that gorgeous fabric! I never get tired of looking at and admiring it! It's like having a poem on the back of the quilt!

After joining the final border, I squared up the edges all around and bound the quilt with leftover binding I made for previous quilts with green batiks. I was about 14 inches shy of binding the whole quilt, so I added in one of four leftover 3-inch floral batik strips from other projects. And then the needle broke just eight inches from completion. The tip of the needle got buried in the quilt, and I had to dig it out. Then find my sewing machine needles; I'd accidentally buried them in a zipper box while spring cleaning. Finally, the quilt was done!

The finished quilt measures 56 inches by 70 inches. Now it's big enough! All quilting was done with Signature cotton in Kelly Green. For this project, I used up one heck of a lot of odd-shaped scraps. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if I decide to make another one), I did not use them all. I think there are enough scraps to perhaps do another whole quilt or two!!!

I'm so tickled green to be done with this quilt. It began when I wasn't sure life would ever have joy again. It helped me remember I like quilting best when I design as I go. Now I have a finished masterpiece and joy, too. This quilt is a symbol of triumph and perseverance to me.

Linking up with Alycia Quilts.

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