Upon returning home one evening, I found a wonderful surprise. A large envelope filled with small squares of fabric.
I was pretty sure that the magical charm quilt faerie was friend DSH. My guess was confirmed upon talking with DC during Google-Meet knitting night. This gift is exciting for me because of my long ongoing charm quilt project.
Thank you friend DSH!!!
OK So, this post has been delayed because I wanted to post a pic of the quilt that had already been started. I was pretty sure that I had blogged about it before… but no. At least not on this blog. Maybe I hae a picture of it stowed away in my google photo stash. Nope. :-/ Time for new photos.
Before I go there, you may be wondering what charm quilts are. I found a wonderful article on antiquequilthistory.com: A History of Charm Quilts. I hadn’t realized that there were so many different types that qualified. I was under the assumption that only the ones with squares fell into that category. If you have clicked on the link then you know (as I do now) that there are many variations.
Now onto the quilt in question: Some years ago I decided to make a postage stamp charm quilt and mentioned it to quilting friends (BP, DSH & DC immediately come to mind). They said that they may be interested in it as well. I began cutting 2″ squares from my scrap fabric and from my not-scrap-fabric. So many little 2″ squares. You see, I had read somewhere that the postage stamp style quilt had 2″ squares. Some time after I had cut a gazillion 2″ squares, it occurred to me that was supposed to be the finished size of each square. I should have accounted for the seam allowances, which would have made each square 2.5″ x 2.5″ :-/ Oh well, too far along. I have no desire to start over. Time to hunt up the progress to date.
Finding the current “in progress” strip was easy. For some reason it was draped over my sewing chair. I should probably mention that I have been sewing the strips together and then attaching the strips to the “main” part of the quilt. My plan is to have all the squares be different fabrics, so I check over the previous ones to see if I already have that fabric as part of the quilt before adding new. I want the quilt to cover a king sized bed with a drop long enough to cover the sides of the mattress. The plan is to have a “border” of black fabric that frames the blocks of fabric on the top side of the mattress before the fall. I like the business of the scrap quilts but I also want to break it up visually, giving the eye a place to rest.
Fast forward a week later and I finally found the main body of the quilt that had already been put together.
(Ummm… yeah. I have so many UFOs)
Within the bag that the quilt was in, was also a “charm pack” from Grandma’s Attic Sewing Emporium. This isn’t my first charm pack. I like getting them because it is an easy way to get many different fabrics all at the same time.
Another way to get different fabrics was my subscription to Grandma’s Scrapbasket Newsletter. It comes once a month through the mail. This includes an informative newsletter, a copy of Grandma’s gazette, a pattern, several blocks of new fabrics, and more. These are some of the included fabric from several months.
As I cut blocks for my quilt, I also cut blocks for my friends. I save them up for a bit before handing them off their intended recipients. I enjoy sharing fabrics with friends and seeing all the fabrics that they share with me. To make the process a little quicker, I make 4 piles of 3-4 fabric squares. Using a clear ruler and a grid-ed cutting mat I even up the right side. Lining the ruler up with the straight edge I cut off the left edge. Repeat for the second 2 squares. This leaves the four “stacks”. Leaving them in place and using the clear ruler, they are each cut into four 2 inch squares. Then added to the waiting stacks above the cutting mat.
It looks like this UFO has moved to the WIP pile. 😀
