Binding Scraps - Amanda Jean Made Me Do It

Amanda Jean Made Me Do It

50’’ x 60’’

Those little triangles you cut off when joining strips for binding or Jelly Roll Race quilts? Do not throw them away!! Keep them for years and years and then you can make this quilt.

Years ago, when I was writing Sunday Morning Quilts with Amanda Jean Nyberg she convinced me to start saving those little triangles. Until then I confess that I was throwing them out. Fast forward a few years and her next book, No Scrap Left Behind, has a delicious pattern for all those little triangles!

It can be daunting when working with So. Many. Small pieces at once. Generally, I would recommend having this be an ongoing project. A little bit here and there or maybe using them as leaders and enders. I ended up doing nothing but this project for a few weeks, at least to get the top done. It nearly killed me. Tedious, to say the least. But the end result was fantastic!! The top needed to sit a little while though, to muster up the steam to see it again.

My recent desire to finish things though brought this quilt up again. I actually had the back made a long time ago too, a request from my oldest, The Monster. At a time when she was feeling down she asked me if I ever made something as a reminder that life can get better? Until then, I had not. Now we have this two sided quilt for the rough days.

It wasn’t too bad to quilt it, even with all the seams. I lifted up the presser foot a bit and dove in with an angular meander. On a scrappy quilt like this you aren’t going to see much in the way of quilting so something all over is perfect. Any colour thread would do as well, so I picked a favourite turquoise variegated from Wonderfil. It worked perfectly.

For those of you that also follow me on Instagram I had a fun time getting help with binding choices. Usually I know exactly what I want to do but this time I was torn. So I put the top choices out to the world. It was really interesting to see what other people thought too. In the end I chose away from my norm. I typically go for a high contrast binding. This time I went for something that blended. I think it was the perfect choice.

And now I’ve finished two quilts already this year. That is already more than last year, I think!

The Mug Club Mug Rug

Confession: I've never made a mug rug before.

If you know me at all you know I have a hard time working small. And a mug rug is very small. I absolutely could not resist, however, when Kerry Goulder at Kid Giddy asked me to participate in The Mug Club Sew Along. I'm rather an obsessive tea and hot chocolate drinker so capturing the best vessel seemed like fun.

There are 12 different patterns in the Mug Club. You can buy one or both series, each with six paper piecing patterns. Kerry sells Series 1 and Sue sells Series 2. They come in 6'' or 10'' finished sizes. Cozy tea time quilt anyone?

Did you know Kerry is a paper piecing master? It seems she can take nearly any shape or image and turn it into an easy to make paper piecing pattern. I'm in awe. Roller skates, Land of Magic, pugs, mugs, and more

I'm also in love with my little mug rug. I picked the Vardagen mug from Series 1. It reminded me of one of my favourite mugs, the kind you can wrap your hands around to warm yet not so big that the tea gets cold before you finish it. I picked the silliest of fabrics because that's just how my sense of humour works. Luchadores on a tea mug?!

Check out all the other mugs made during this sew-along by following the #TheMugClub or #TheMugClubSAL on Instagram.  Both Kerry and her sister, Sue, are leading a beautiful parade of mugs!

Amanda Jean Made Me Do It

Seven years ago I made a leap. I was recuperating from my stupid knee injuries and thinking a lot about life, about what I wanted to be when I grew up. At that time I started emailing another blogger a bit more. One day we decided to take our relationship to the next level and talk on the phone. It was like being a teenager all over again, chit chatting for hours as I lay on my bed and ignored my family. Now I consider her a good friend, a professional colleague, and a quilty inspiration.

Amanda Jean Nyberg now has a new book. It is out now and I jumped on board to help her celebrate. No Scrap Left Behind is her perfect book. She is extraordinarily frugal and saves everything. This book takes that mentality and applies it to all your fabric. She does so with useful tips, storage ideas, and completely inspiring quilts. 

To celebrate the release of the book Amanda asked us to not only blog about the book but to also make something from it. Back when we were writing Sunday Morning Quilts she got me to save my binding triangles. Those little bits we cut off when joining binding strips. I hadn't exactly been throwing them away, but they got dumped in with the rest of my colour sorted scraps. In our discussions writing the book we agreed on sorting by colour as well as pulling out strips/strings and snippets. She took it to the next level with those binding triangles. So I started putting mine aside. They filled a jar. Then overflowed the jar. After that they filled a bowl. Just as I was thinking it was time to do something about them No Scrap Left Behind comes out. It was meant to be.

There are two quilts in the book that I could have done, Remainders and Chain of Diamonds (not to mention Up, Up, and Away from Sunday Morning Quilts). I chose Chain of Diamonds because it reminded me of a sketch I once made myself from a store window I once saw. Plus, I had a lot of colours in my overflowing jar and bowl.

I'm not going to lie, this was an intense make. Made more so by me doing it over the last 2 weeks while I was sick (and my kids). I counted, there are 1709 seams in this quilt! But the good thing is that they are all small. 

To keep the project a lot more manageable, I suggest turning this into one of two things. Make the blocks as leaders/enders. That is, prep your background squares and keep them next to your machine with the triangles. At the end of a seam when you are working on something else sew a triangle on instead of cutting your thread. Or, turn this into a Morning Make project. Spend 10-20 minutes a day and slowly but sure the blocks will come together. 

Regardless of how you do this I would totally recommend this quilt. It was fun, it has great impact, and it makes excellent use of those scraps!

I went from a full platter (once I unsquished them from the jar/bowl) to barely a third. I even had to cut a few extra scraps to round out the selection. Now I just might have to make something else to use the rest of the triangles! For a change from my instinctual mix of low volume fabrics for the background I went all the way to the other end of the spectrum. Black prints, including many from my Tag collection, played together. As I made blocks it was a lot of fun to think back to the quilt where the scrap came from. So many memories.

Thanks for being a good friend all these years Amanda Jean. And for continuing to be such an inspiration to quilters everywhere.

I'm happy to be giving away a copy of the No Scrap Left Behind to a lucky reader, courtesy of C&T Publishing. Trust me, you want this book! Please leave a comment below, including your email: nameATserverDOTcom. I can't auto reply through my blog so I need your email to get you your prize. US winners get a hard copy of the book, International winners will get a digital version.

GIVE AWAY IS NOW CLOSED

Make sure you check out all the other bloggers sharing their projects from the book:

Monday, April 24th Mary Kolb

Tuesday, April 25, Lee Monroe

Wednesday, April 26, Sandi Hazelwood

Thursday, April 27, Bernie Kringel

Friday, April 28, Erin Cox

Monday, May 1, Katherine Greaves

Tuesday, May 2, Tracy Mooney

Wednesday, May 3, Cheryl Arkison

Thursday, May 4, Debbie Jeske

Friday, May 5, 

Giveaway Winner was Sue, comment 190/226. Thanks to the Random Number Generator.

Love the black & white background you used! It's nice to read how you became friends with Amanda Jean too. :)

All The Sundays

All The Sundays

70'' x 70''

An oh so special quilt is finally finished. I wasn't impatient or anything, but as soon as the last stitches went in the other day I realized how much I wanted this quilt to be done. Only so that it could be real, that it could be a thing I used and loved.

The first bits of piecing in this quilt started years ago. I was teaching a Slab class, the technique popularized in my book with Amanda Jean, Sunday Morning Quilts. In my prep for the class I grabbed a bunch of scraps from making the quilts in A Month of Sundays. They were handy, that's all. I had no specific plan. So I made my samples for the class and that was that. A bit later I was reading Denyse Schmidt's book, Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspirations. Her Shoeman's Puzzle quilt grabbed me immediately.

I'm not sure when the moment was that I decided to combine all these influences into one quilt, but it happened. And it was love at first sight.

It wasn't an easy quilt to make. I made freezer paper templates to keep me on track. Those didn't come into play until after I'd made slabs though. The templates were totally necessary to keep lines as they should be, especially important with all those angles and bias edges. Of course, then there is the removing of the paper. Thankfully there are only 3 seams in each block, about the easiest paper piecing you can do.

The quilt top sat for a year and a half in the closet, keeping a dozen other quilt tops company. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do to quilt it and was willing to wait until the right idea hit me. Or, the right person to do it for me. 

Last summer I met Dara from Stitched Quilting Co. Turns out her MIL lives a few blocks away from me. We had a few visits and chatted quilting, dogs, and mothering. Well a couple of months ago Dara messaged to say she had an opening in her long arm schedule and delivery ready, if I had a quilt to go. Seeing as my Quilts Under Construction list is quite long I wasn't about to turn down the opportunity! This quilt made the cut precisely because I didn't have a plan for it and I already had a wide back purchased and ready to go. After a frantic evening of pulling papers and a few repairs I got it to Dara.

With so much solid expanse in the whites/creams of the quilt top this needed a special touch. Dara gave it just that! Such custom, detailed work. So much attention to detail. There are secondary and tertiary patterns in this quilt top and her quilting highlighted them. I'm thrilled with the outcome.

For the backing and binding I chose to go back to my dear friend Amanda Jean's fabric, Good Neighbors. She had a wide back fabric in that collection. And the orange dot was absolutely perfect for the binding. Conveniently I'd just ordered a half yard of it, the perfect amount. And lucky for me, because neither are available anymore!

My husband will happily tell anyone that we have a ridiculous amount of quilts in our house. He is very obliging if we are asked for donations or gifts. Little does he know that this quilt will never leave my hands. It represents so much to me, not to mention that I think it is absolutely beautiful. I will always think of friendships, how my career has grown, and the history contained in some beautiful fabric.