Panel Quilt Backing

Babies are coming, so it's time for me to quilt!

I finished the backing for Baby Perry's quilt on Tuesday night, and the sandwiching was finished last night. I hope to put it on the longarm tonight. Hopefully the quilt can be finished this weekend because I still need to finish another quilt for Baby Garner this month. (Except Baby Garner is a girl, so I'm rethinking the panel I planned to use to quickly work up the second quilt. On a very positive note, many of my WIPs would be suitable for a girl, and I have more than enough girly stash to create a totally new quilt. Just not enough time to do something too labor-intensive.

I've stressed for a couple of weeks about what I could use to back this awesome dinosaur panel. I thought I had some Fossil Rim leftovers from my future paleontologist grandson and my neighbor's grandson's quilt, but I couldn't find them. I kept looking under the guise of organizing and downsizing and finally found the second half of a layer cake, four different coordinating fabrics in yardage, two charm packs and some scraps from the checkerboard border I made for last year's dinosaur quilt.

I even still had a few leftover gray jelly roll strips I could use as sashing. I think that gray has been incorporated into two or three other quilts. There might be enough left to sash one more baby quilt, being as I then pieced together all the leftover sections from this quilt back to make yet one more jelly roll strip. Yay!

I've been getting reacquainted with my sewing machine for a few days now. While working on the butterfly dress I finished last month, I found a pair of shorts I'd cut out one year. Shorts are fast and easy, and we've got the heat. So shorts are a very welcome addition to my wardrobe. I finished them in about half an hour. I wore them the next day. They are in the laundry basket now.

I also found a jelly roll set and coordinating yardage I'd bought a few years ago to make another dress. The colors are just luscious, so I decided to cut the yardage into 3-inch strips so I can work on that dress once I finish the deadline baby quilts. I had enough yardage left for a bodice, so I cut out that and the lining and pockets, too. that will make working on this dress so much more enticing because it's ready to go. I don't have to do anything but sew!!! I am actually anxious to wear it, so maybe that will help me get the baby quilts done!!!

I also whipped together all the selvedges I'd cut off all the fabric I've bought during the last couple of years or so.

I used to roll the selvedges after sorting into colorways and photographing them, then sell them in my Etsy shop. I still have quite a few rolls from pre-2019 I never had a chance to list in my Etsy shop, so this time, I decided to make selvedge yarn. Tarn is made from T-shirts, and plarn is made from plastic bags. I have no clue what they call yarn made from selvedges. Sarn?!?

I've made plenty of rugs now from selvedge yarn. I can't have space rugs on our hardwood floors now because Lizard could trip on them. So perhaps I'll make a bag or a porch rug... or maybe just list the big balls of strips on Etsy...

Linking up with Alycia Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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Fairy Cottage Monday

What have you made with toilet paper or paper towel rolls???

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Rags 2 Riches

My April goal, in addition to finishing a WIP, is to finish a block a day. Doesn't matter what block. Doesn't matter if it's a WIP or new. Just finish a block each day. If I can.

I took a two-day break from Lizard Toes blocks last weekend because I got tired of walking past my huge mountain of selvedges. Really tired. I decided it was time to get rid of them.

This isn't even a fraction of the stash I separated out into color groups. I stitched half the selvedges together Friday night and began crocheting.

Saturday night I stitched the rest of the selvedges together, and finished up the rug. And now I don't have a stash of selvedges to annoy me while I'm trying to get things done anymore. At least until I start using up some of the untrimmed fabric in my stash, right?

You may do whatever you'd like with rugs you make from this pattern, but you may not sell or republish the pattern. Thanks, and enjoy!

Materials: Approximately 34 yards of selvedges or fabric cut into approximately 1-inch strips to make "yarn", size Q (or desired large) crochet hook, scissors, sewing machine and/or sewing needle, sewing thread

Rags 2 Riches Rug Instructions

Make "yarn" by sewing, tying or looping strips into one extremely long piece. (I machine-stitched my ends together.) For convenience and to prevent tangled messes, roll "yarn" into ball as you go.

Make magic ring.

Round 1: 6 sc in ring; do not join on this or any of the rounds that follow. Pull magic circle tight.

Round 2: 2 sc in each sc around for a total of 12 sc.

Round 3: [3 sc in next sc, sk next sc] 6 times for a total of 18 sc, 1 sc in next sc.
If you're not reading this pattern on Snowcatcher, you're not reading the designer's blog. Please go here to see the original.

Round 4: [3 sc in next sc, 1 sc in each of next 2 sc] 6 times.

Round 5: [3 sc in next sc, 1 sc in next sc, 1 sc dec across next 2 sc, 1 sc in next sc] 6 times.

Rounds 6-desired width of project: [3 sc in next hexie tip sc, 1 sc in each of next hexie side sc, dec 1 st on each side, trying to to repeat decs directly above dc in previous Round] 6 times. Continue in this pattern until desired width of project is attained. Bind off. Weave in ends. For added strength, st a few sewing stitches by hand or by machine through beg and final ends

Linking up with Alycia Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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Denim Doodah

Six years ago, I wrote tongue-in-cheek about denim whiskers. It's even bigger a thing now than it was then!!! Websites have pages dedicated to the fad!!!

Whiskering

What are "whiskers"?

Denim Hunters

A denim vocabulary?!?
(Turns out I'm a denimhead...)

More denim than you ever thought possible

Fashion Statement
I've saved old jeans for ages. At one point, way back in the early '80s, I was making a puzzle quilt from Ragtime and Elephant Ear jeans I'd worn as a teenager, along with straight-leg jeans from my four younger brothers handed down so many times, I had just about every shade of super pastel indigo you could imagine.

Alas, my first (and former) husband ignited the entire project (along with many other WIPs) in a burn barrel back in about 1987 because he thought the grocery bags I stored everything in were trash. There was a rainbow sweater in there I'd been knitting for my youngest sister for about three years. There were T-shirts from all my siblings' band and choir days. All my concert T-shirts were in there. Even my prized Fleetwood Mac T-shirt. (No, that's not why we divorced, but it was pretty traumatic!)

I started a new jeans collection immediately after, and I've made a good many projects since then. I'm always on the lookout for new ideas. And old jeans!

I no longer have the first (or second or third) denim skirt or the one-of-a-kind classic '80s blazer (each pattern piece came from a different pair of jeans) I fashioned from old jeans back in the '80s, but I do still have the vest I made in approximately 1995...




... and the jean jacket I made from three different pairs of ice-wash jeans in about 1998.






I've had four or five denim reindeer bodies ready to be assembled since about 1999. I finally finished one last weekend because I decided our electric fireplace needed one. And because it was a WIP, and because it's nearly Christmas, and because it felt good to play with denim again.






And look what I found when I was looking for buttons I could use for eyes for the denim reindeer! Remember these?!? Remember prices like this?!?


Here are some wonderful ideas for denim rugs. I might have to get creative and do something floorish with all the jeans hems one day after I get done cutting up the next batch that's destined for a quilt. (No more new WIPS until I get a few done, but I'm dreaming about a flannel and denim rag quilt!)


Linking up with Alycia Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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