Monday, February 16, 2015

Bottled Rainbows

My 4 year old asked me to make her a quilt...again! I give her all my scraps that are smaller than 2.5 inches and ones that are too short for a strings quilt.  So I thought she had enough little pieces to make a bottled rainbow quilt.  What looks like a large pile of scraps can not be enough! 


 We sorted them all by color. Then I went through them and put them into shades and removed the duplicates.  There wasn't much left!  So I made my blocks 10 x 10 with the inside being only 6 inches.  Surely there would be enough for that.  


Here are a couple of the blocks. (These pictures are after washing.)  I didn't have enough of a couple of the colors and had to get into my scrap stash.   I even didn't have enough blue in my scraps to make a block so I cut some from my regular stash.  And I thought I had a lot of scraps!  Apparently, I have a lot of the same stuff.  Need to work on that.


To fix this problem, I used a single fabric 2 times in each block spreading it out. You can see I duplicated 3 of the red fabrics.

I used clear monopoly thread to quilt this so I didn't get white thread on a dark color like you see in this picture below:  (this is an older quilt I have hanging on my wall)  You can read this post for some tips using this type of thread.


Here you can see below that it isn't that big a deal to quilt on both sides of the ditch when you use clear thread.  You should know that I really dislike stitching in the ditch - mainly because I can't quilt straight even with a ruler!  It really isn't noticeable when looking at the quilt (unless you zoom in with your camera!).
 

I stitched around both sides of the color on the blocks, leaving the centers untouched.  Oh that's right I didn't do quilt-as-you-go like everyone else.  I used a glue stick to glue the small pieces where they should go, then zig zagged them down, one block at a time.  Like applique without using interfacing.  
And just so you know I am never ever perfect...I always forget to trim threads when I am using a white sashing.  By the time I saw this I did not want to unload and trim!  My 4 year old won't see it until she's much older and by then, I'll just make her another quilt!


I was going to quilt some spirals in the color part of each block, but after all the ditch work and the straight  lines in the sashing I didn't feel like it any more.  Less is more - right?  The back has a fun rainbow of solids because I couldn't get one on the front.


  There is one happy 4 year old running around my house these days!


3 comments:

  1. I love your daughter's quilt. Rainbow quilts are my favorite lately. I find snipping threads really tedious. And I found some on my Farmer's Wife after more than an hour of snipping. You are the first person I've told. ;) I am also lacking in the variety of my scraps. I feel like I am building my scrap collection.

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  2. As always, love your latest project. I wish I had the same fabric stash as yours, I'd just make the same things you do - love them all!
    For dealing with those dark threads, I read about the Clover Soft Touch Thread Pic on a blog, bought one and found it works really well. It's a teeny tiny needle sized crochet hook that you can use to pull threads to the surface and then snip them off. Didn't leave a hole in the fabrics I used it on, also useful for tying knots on short tails and burying them. I bought mine at Joann's. If you get one, be careful how you store it, I keep mine in my binding supplies pouch, but the lid keeps coming off - and the tiny hook might get bent. Hope this is helpful!

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  3. I can only imagine your daughters giggles and smiles over her new quilt . I like to think that each quilt I give gets the same reaction.
    Please tell your daughter that I think her quilt is beautiful.

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