A couple of finishes

Last week I got stuck into the SQT Jan Challenge - a Bear Paw quilt.  I put the finishing touches on it on Jan 31 - phew just made it!

Not too sure I like it yet.  I used my scrap bags - the same fabrics with which I made the Single Girl quilt flimsy. 

I have also made the following using the same fabrics.  This one I like.

It's about 48" square and will have scrappy purple binding.  I even know how I am going to quilt it.  That's saying something for me as I usually have absolutely no idea on how things should be quilted.

Then this morning I made this....

It gets rid of my current stash of 2.5" strips.  Thank goodness as I was getting sick of the colours.  Apparently that happens when you use the same pile of fabrics again and again.

I still have to trim of the top edge.  It's about 65" x 48".  Not sure what will happen with it yet.  Maybe when I get around to quilting it I will put it up on facebook for sale - or donate to a cali club for a raffle.

Talking about quilting things - I have done a rough count of the flimsies I have hanging around and there's over 12 of them!!!  Time they were actually finished off don't you think?

newest quilt

Ok, so the other day I had read about a technique on speed sewing a quilt top using nothing but a jelly roll - I think it was called jelly roll 1600.  This had me intrigued so I went to my LFS to get a jelly roll.  I found 1 that I liked, but it had been 'broken into' and did not have all the lengths it should have had.  So I went to the sales table and lo and behold, I found 13 coordinating fabrics.  This really rare for me, never mind the sales table.  They were all from differnt ranges too, which I think made it better.  Since I found this many I decided that fate was playing a hand and I bought 1m of 12 of them.

Here they are.

I Sunday I sat down to make me a speed quilt.  I cut 3 2.5" strips from each of the fabrics, dumped them all on the floor and randomly picked up 2 to sew them end to end.  I kept going until all 36 strips were used up.  The only rule I had was to not put 2 of the same fabric together.  I did diagonal seams for interest.  Once together I got the two ends and then sewed down the length - I went from a pieced strip 1512" long to one that was 2 strips wide and 756" long - had to cut the strip in half when I got to the end (middle??). 

Here's the pile that seaming made.

Then I found the ends again and sewed the 2 strip sets together along the length, cut the end and repeated it twice more, until I had a finished quilt top.

All in all it took only a couple of hours from start (cutting the strips) to finish.  I picked up the strips randomly, so what surprised me was that twice, when doing the first long seam, I had the same fabrics being sewn together and then on the next long seam they ended up near one another.

I showed it my youngest and she thought it was quite nice.  I haven't measured it yet, but it is a nice large lap size.  It has inspired me to make another one from the same fabrics since I still have 80cm of it left.  I'm thinking this one will be more ordered with some sashing and some plain borders.