Another finish! This one for Greta

  Crayon Scribbles

I'm so happy to have another quilt finished and off to its new owner.  This is a quilt that I started making for my granddaughter, Greta, even before she was born -- May 20, 2014.  What with the broken legs incident and the hassles of selling one house and buying another, that's pretty good, I think.  I have plenty of UFOs way older than that!

  Unfortunately, it seems that I neglected to take a photo of the completed quilt top.  And then so much time passed before I got it quilted that I forgot had hadn't taken pics!  Arrgh!

This was from when the blocks were on my "design wall" (the bedroom curtains).

You might remember that I used a disappearing wheel block from a Missouri Star Quilt Co. tutorial (http://aquilterspath.blogspot.com/2015/03/for-greta-from-jenny-doan.html).




I changed up the colors and added sashing to make the blocks stand out more.



The blocks remind me of those fat, flat-sided crayons that they make for toddlers.  So I decided that the name of the quilt would have something to do with crayons.


Then the quilt top sat, and sat, and sat.  With Greta's second (!) birthday looming, it was time to get back to work!







After stitching in the ditch to secure the quilt sandwich, I quilted parallel lines around each "crayon."
One more row of stitching to anchor the interior white rectangles.

The sashing turned out to be too wide (in my opinion), and there is just SO MUCH WHITE.  (But, as my son said, "not for long!").  Well, what would a toddler do with an expanse of white and a box of crayons?  Yep, she'd scribble all over it.  So that's what I did on the sashing.

I just zigged and zagged down the sashing in variegated thread.  Curvy lines would have looked better, more scribble-y, but I hadn't done any free-motion quilting in a while, and I didn't think it would turn out very well.  This was OK, and it helped to break up all the white.

With all those pretty colors on the top, what would I use for binding?  I still had some 10" squares from the original layer cake package.  I cut them into strips and made a pieced binding.  I really like how it turned out!

I also know that this puppy can stand up to washing.  I hadn't prewashed the layer cake, and when the quilt was washed, of course ONE RED fabric bled.  And bled.  It took four washes with ten Color Catchers to get rid of the excess dye.





Of course, since I'd forgotten to photograph the front of the quilt, I didn't have pics of the back, either.  It's flannel with a whimsical farm theme.  Sheep, cows, a puppy, and some (upside-down) chickens at the bottom.

I'd make this quilt again, but I would make it smaller.  The idea was for Greta to have a playing and crawling surface that could be washed.  But she was out of the crawling phase before I could turn around!  Maybe it will make a nice cover for her first Big Girl bed.

Shhh....  It's a coverup!

So, I was staring at my pile of UFOs and feeling stuck in that place where you just don't know where to start.  So I did what any normal person would do -- I decided to make something else entirely.

I almost never cover my sewing machine (I know, I know...).  The plastic cover it came with just seems like too much.  It takes up precious floor space when not in use, so I put it in the closet and then forget about it.  I ran across a pattern for a sewing machine cover that used charm squares.  Perfect, a small, quick project that would actually be useful.

After rooting through my stash of 5" squares (some actual charm packs, some [pre]cut by me at the end of a project), I didn't find anything I wanted to use.  But at the bottom of the bin, I found a layer cake that would do.  The 10" squares were in two colorways, neutral and blue.  I could see using the blue in a quilt, but the neutral not so much.  So I cut it into 5" squares and the cover was on its way.

The trouble with pre-cuts is they so often wonky.  Most of the ones I used were off, some almost 1/4".  Can you see it?

Here's a closer view.

 Oh, well, it's just a sewing machine cover.  At least my machine is happier!  I don't know what kind of machine the blogger has who made up this pattern, but it must be a lot bigger than mine.  I had to take out half the squares!  Part of the reason was probably because I have my machine in a table, machine bed flush with the table top.  But it cover was also waaaay too long.  I guess she must have a machine with an oversize harp space.