Rainbow Waves scrap quilt {Blogger's Quilt Festival}

Welcome once again to the Blogger's Quilt Festival, when all of us who only wish we were at Spring Market have our own little festival.  This year I am entering my Rainbow Waves quilt into the Scrappy Quilt category.

This quilt was made from a design found on another quilter's blog.  You can find the link to the original design and a break down of the block for this quilt here.

To make this I pulled from my scrap piles, (only prints and brights, and no pinks or purples) and cut as many 3.5" squares as I could.   These paired with 3.5" squares of white and became 768 half square triangles.  Whew!

The top without borders would have measured 60"x80", but at the last minute I decided to add a string pieced border which ended up bumping it up to more like 75"x95".

For the border I pulled from my string box, anything that looked to be less than 1.5". I trimmed them to 3 common widths and then pieced them end to end.  I sewed the border on around and around and around the top until I ran out of strings and ended up with a really dynamic border about 5" wide.

I stippled the whole thing for simplicity's sake, and to tame all the scraps.  Of course it finished off with a scrappy binding :)

Be sure to go back to the festival and check out other entries, and check out my other entry in the Modern category here.

Rainbow Waves Finally Finished!

At long last the Rainbow Waves quilt that I've been showing you sneak peeks of is done! This quilt began as an attempt to use of scraps (of course). I cut as many 3.5" squares from my colored, prints scraps as I could, which eventually became (768) 3" HSTs.  I have made a traditional ocean waves quilt before and I love the block, but went looking for something a little different this time.  The design was borrowed from The Cre8tive Quilter's blog.  To see how the blocks come together go here. 

The quilt measure something like 75"x95", so I am calling it a full size.  It was already 60"x80" before I decided to add borders.  Don't ask me what I was thinking making a large, heavy, difficult to quilt top even bigger with borders. I suppose I was thinking that it was a way to cram more scraps into it.

I got into my strings bin and pulled everything that looked to be less than 1.5" wide.  I trimmed them to 3/4", 1", and 1.5" widths and pieced them end to end. Then I sewed the strings around and around and around the top to make the border.  The innermost round of the border is just a 1/4" wide.

Full disclosure: the corners did not lay remotely flat before washing.  All better now :)

I decided for simplicity's sake to just stipple the whole thing.  A wonderful friend modified my desk so that my machine bed sits level, which made this possible.  I actually stippled the borders first, then trimmed the sides and went ahead and bound it before stippling the body of the quilt. I figured I needed to lose every little bit of bulk I could before the real quilting began.

There are lots of fun favorite fabrics in this quilt. I snuck in a few patches of fabric from my alma mater.  Trimming my HSTs carefully made all the difference as far as matching up corners in this thing.  Not all the corners are perfect, not even close, but I'm really happy with how many of them are good.

Like all the best scrap quilts, it doesn't look like much up close but from a distance the design comes out.  It's kind of like an eye-spy looking in close. (I see a couple more A&M fabrics and part of a snowman in the section above.)

I used a cotton sheet with a cool pattern for the back and, of course, bound it in scraps. I had almost enough left over binding in solids to do the whole quilt but ended up having to throw in a couple of prints.  I keep my leftover bindings wound around each other like a jelly roll. This quilt took the diameter of my binding-roll from something like a dinner plate to just 4" across.

Delicious krinkle in the sunshine. I can hardly wait for winter again so I can put this on the bed! On and interesting note, it's always hard to guess how many yards of fabrics are sitting in our scraps bins. But, I used an equal amount of white fabric to prints in the HSTs for this and I know I went through at least 3 yards of white, probably more. So I pulled 3 yards of good fabric out of my scraps, and there's still plenty left!  Goes to show, there's more fabric left in scraps than you'd think.

Linking up to Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts and HSTeria at Vicki's blog.

WIP Wednesday: Still Stippling

Quilting away on this beast and thanking God for the friend who modified my sewing desk. Quilting this myself would have been impossible without a recessed machine.

Happy Wednesday! Linking up to WIP Wednesday.

WIP Wednesday: Quilting

No sooner said than done, my freshly modified desk and machine were delivered back this evening and I am already quilting away!  The triangle quilt along quilt is first up on the machine.

I'm going with the traditional straight line quilting on this one, outlining the seams. I will also be leaving the zig-zag edges rather than trimming them.  I'm also working on the Rainbow Waves quilt bit by bit.

This pic is from when I basted it (of course Wilson was helping).  I am planning a simple stipple but it is such a large quilt that it will be a real bear to quilt.  Here's to a happy day's quilting!

Linking up to Lee's WIP Wednesday. 

Rainbow Waves on the Design Wall

Another weekend full of sewing has flown by!  Today was spent visiting wit a friend, watching movies, and beginning to assemble the 48 HST blocks into 4-block sections.  We watched Waking Ned Devine today, which is possibly my favorite movie of all time.  If you haven't ever seen it you should fix that ASAP :)

Remember this is the Ocean Waves variation I found in this blog post.  Unfortunately the quilter does not seem to be actively blogging any more. It's an awesome block!

I have 9 of these 4-block units done, 3 more to go and then I begin assembling the top.  (Six units are shown above, that's half the quilt.) Here's to a quick work week and plenty of time to sew!

Linking up to Judy's Design Wall Monday.

Rainbow Waves on the Design Wall

Work has been keeping me way too busy lately, but here's what's on the design wall today.  The first four blocks of the Rainbow Waves quilt!

Also, look what came in the mail today!

:)

Linking up to Judy's DesignWall Monday.

768 Half Square Triangles

 Yes! I finally have all my HSTs sewn, pressed, and  trimmed for the scrappy Rainbow (Ocean) Waves quilt. 

Trimming the last 88 HSTs

Turns out the scraps I initially cut gave me 680 HSTs, which would have been plenty, but a last minute design change meant I needed more.  Flipping through Pintrest last night I found this blog post from the Cre8tive Quilter with a fabulous ocean waves variation.

In case you were wondering what 768 HSTs looks like

After carefully counting and stacking all my HSTs I needed to randomize them for sewing in to blocks, so I tossed them all in a drawer and stirred.  This quilt is going to be heavy on the blues and greens because, let's face it, all my quilts are :)

Here's the layout for the blocks in this quilt.  These squares were initially cut to 3.5", sewn into HSTs, then trimmed to 3", so they will finish at 2.5" in the quilt.  Each block should finish at 10".

Block one, done! Now I just need to make 47 more...

Linking up to Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation.

Sew, cut, press, trim (repeat)

Here's the progress this week on the HST project.  180 HSTs so far pieced, cut, pressed, and trimmed.  And many, many more to go!  Ultimately these blocks will become a scrappy ocean waves quilt (inspired by the blocks they are making this month on the d.GS Joy circle).  Ocean waves is one of my very favorite blocks, I made a quilt of it before here.  That one was all blues, but this time I'm going rainbow.

I think I may have gone overboard cutting my scraps, though. I didn't count ahead of time but it's looking like I'll have way more blocks than I'll need to make even a pretty large quilt. Too many HSTs; good problem to have, huh?  :)

Linking up to Lee's WIP Wednesday.