Salt Water {Blogger's Quilt Festival}

Hello, and welcome to the Blogger's Quilt Festival! This is my entry for the Two-Color quilt category.  The Salt Water quilt is a traditional Ocean Waves design made from scraps of blue and white remnants.   This quilt was a numbers game, ending up with (864) 2" HSTs to make a 64"x72" quilt.

I opted to quilt it with wave-like wobbly lines.  The quilting helped to smooth out the lines of the design and to keep the many seams of this quilt in check.  The blues in the top of this quilt came exclusively from remnants I have collected over the years. I was amazed at how small of a dent it made in my overflowing stash of blues.

For the backing I found a couple of novelty sailing fabrics on sale. I didn't have enough to cover whole thing, so the backing is pieced. The recipient of this quilt is a sailor, so this fabric was perfect for him.

The blues include a variety of prints and solids, including a couple of shot cottons and a light denim.  I had enough of the denim left to make the perfect binding from.

I was able to sew up this label for the back with a classic quote. It says, "The cure for anything is salt water- sweat, tears, or the sea."  You can read more about this quilt and the process of making it here.

Thanks for visiting, be sure to check out the other entrants at the quilt festival and vote for your favorites.  You can also see my other entry in the scrap quilt category here.  Enjoy the festival!

"Salt Water" The Ocean Waves Quilt is DONE!!!

 The Ocean Waves quilt, now officially named "Salt Water" is finished! The picture above is the closet I could get to a photo of the whole thing.  There's about 18" more hanging over the back of the swing. Prepare yourself for a picture heavy post.  I am pretty darn proud of this baby :) 

My LQS had this great sailing theme fabric on sale a while back. I didn't get enough to do the whole back, but it covered about half.

864 2" HSTs to make one twin-size quilt; somehow the triangles look smaller now that it is quilted and washed.  Prior to shrinking in the wash this quilt measured 64"x72", a modest twin.  Despite that, it is probably the most ambitious quilt I have ever taken on. The only one that would be close would be the Carpenter's Star quilt I made last Christmas with its abundance of Y-seams.

It says "The cure for anything is salt water- sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen.

I work at an embroidery shop, so I was able to sew up a panel for the back with this classic quote.  I set it with some variegated blue fabric and two novelty sailing fabrics.  The recipient of this quilt is a tall ship sailor, so the nautical theme is perfect for him.  I did sew up four copies of this panel since that's how many the machine can run at once. I still have 3 more in various shades of blue to play with, so who knows what projects those may turn up in later ;)

The blues for this came exclusively from scraps I have picked up over the years, mostly from remnants bins. I was actually surprised how small of a dent it made in my overflowing collection of blue fabrics.  There's a denim like fabric in here, two different shot cottons (my favorites!), a blue plaid, and a few different small prints.  The combination of them all together looks better than I ever hoped.

I quilted this with wavy horizontal lines.  I suppose they look like waves.  Mostly I just wanted something curvy that would break up the straight lines of the HSTs.  I quilted it pretty densely; some of the lines cross over each other and others don't.  Fortunately, it was pretty quick quilting after such a long piecing time.  It krinkled up amazingly after a wash and dry. Maybe because of all the different small pieces? I don't know, but I like it!

Another gratuitous shot of the quilting in the light.

I love this quilt.  Plain and simple.  It would be hard to give it away if it were going to just anyone, but I'm pretty fond of this boy, too :)  This quilt is proof to me, if there ever was one, that when quilting it's not worth it to get caught up in the details.  The points of all those HSTs are "approximate" in a lot of places.  A lot of them are right on, while others are off as much as a quarter of an inch.  Because I skipped over trimming to HSTs my blocks ended up slightly large and when trimmed down to 8.5" square it was impossible to make the points meet perfectly where they came together.  If you look too closely at these pictures you'll see what I'm talking about.

But I don't care :)  This quilt looks great from 10 feet, and nobody who's going to be looking at it close up will care about the misaligned points.   It's worth every bit of the time and effort that went in to it and I love that it looks homemade and invites cuddles.  I couldn't be more happy.  Well, scratch that, when I give this to its new owner, that will be the happiest moment.

A parting shot.

I did it!!

From a bin full of HSTs to a completed top, 2016 pieces later, Ocean Waves is finally a flimsy! By the time I realized how insane this project was I was already too far in to quit. My plan to finish was to get done before I could realize how overwhelming the amount of piecing was.

864 HSTs ready to become a top

It was definitely a long haul, but today I was able to sew, press, and trim the final blocks and get the whole things assembled. By the end I was able to sew (16) 2.5" units into a 8.5" block in less than 10 minutes, a major improvement over my pace at the beginning. Surprisingly (although perhaps not...) I think the single most time consume element of this whole process was pressing all those seams open.

A shot of part of the back

The next step is putting together the back and layering for quilting. Fortunately, I am planning a simple, quick quilting pattern for this monster!

37 out of 72 done...

Little by little the Ocean Waves quilt is coming together.  I am a little over half way there!

Scrappy Potential

I got a few of these large jars from the local BBQ place to stuff scraps in.

I've always wanted to make a ticker tape quilt and the time has finally come! This stuffed jar of scraps is about to become a ticker tape quilt with minky backing for a little girl.  I couldn't resist staring it today. I plan to do just a little bit every day and slowly work my way across the quilt.

I normally don't start a new project until I've finished the last one. I like to finish things and I usually don't have a lot of UFOs around.  For some reason though I'm going through a phase where I have a lot of ideas that I just can't wait to get started on.  I think I have four quilts actively in the works right now.

I am still putting together blocks on the Ocean Waves quilt. So far I have 13 blocks out of 72 done. On the bright side I love the way it looks. On the down side, 59 blocks to go...

HST Insanity...

Pressed HSTs for a few hours last night.  Is that pile getting ANY smaller?!

 I'd been sort of toying with the idea of making an "Ocean Waves" quilt for a friend of mine.  It was a someday sort of project.  Well, when said friend announced intentions to come for a visit around Christmas that 'someday' project suddenly went to the top of my priority list! 

For reasons that I can only credit to temporary insanity I decided to make this quilt with 2" HSTs and without borders to help fill it out.  ...Oh my.  To make a decent sized twin quilt that's (72) 8" blocks or 864 HSTs or (1,152) 2" units or 2016 individual pieces in this quilt! No matter how you think about it, it's a much more labor intensive quilt than I usually tackle.

With a burst of productivity in the past couple days I got all the HSTs cut and sewn and spent about 2 hours pressing them last night.  Today I started assembling the blocks.  So far I have learned that I CAN get away without trimming all those little devils (Hallelujah!) but I CAN'T avoid pressing the seams open.  I have my little Clover mini-iron out to help with pressing all those seams open and I've already burnt my finger good to start the day off.

This is what 864 freshly pressed HSTs looks like, in case you were wondering.

This quilt is putting up a fight, but I will prevail!