Thursday, April 08, 2010

On the Downhill Slide

Yep, I am on the downhill slide in my stint as President of the Quilt Guild. Tonight was our election for next year and I am officially going to be the past president after two more meetings! I am so looking forward to enjoying the meetings from the back of the room for a change - I'm glad that I was able to serve my guild, but I am ready to be done.


Still listing an item a day in my Etsy shop. Today was this sweet little quilt:



I quilted it last night. It's pretty cute, and definitely cheerful.


And last, but not least, if you want to read a great article about buying a quilt, read this post on the Quiltsy Team Blog. Really great information on quilts!

And now it's time for bed. No school or work tomorrow! You know what that means - no alarm clock in the morning, we are sleeping in - aaah!

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Frugal Quilting - Binding from Scraps

Have you ever noticed that binding is one of those things that just never comes out even? For every project I complete I almost always have a length of binding left over. Sometimes it's only a few inches, but often it can be much more. For the past year I have been collecting my leftover binding pieces in a shoe box along with other small scraps. My box has recently started to overflow with bits and pieces so I decided it was time to sew the binding scraps together to make a lenght of binding ready for scrap quilts.

I sewed the strips together using a diagonal seam to join the strips and ended up with a very long piece of binding. After pressing all the seams open and making sure my fabric was nice and smooth with a good fold in the center I rolled it all up around a small notebook. This will allow me to place the roll around my wrist as I sew the binding on, keeping it clean and untangled! I think this roll will bind at least two queen size quilts. Pretty good for just using pieces leftover from other projects!

For this set of strips I sewed them together in an "anything goes" kind of a way, but I think I might try saving my bits in a different way next round. I could do a bag of pastels, a bag of earth tones and a bag of brights. That way I would have some more coordinated binding sets. It also might be a nice idea to sew them together as I gather them. Though it did only take me an hour to sew all my bits together and press them. Either way, it's lovely to have some pre-made binding at my disposal for various projects.

Scrappy binding is a great way to save money - to bind a queen size quilt I would buy at least 3/4 of a yard of fabric, so this lenth of binding saved me about $15.00 at current quilt shop prices, and it will look great around the string quilt blocks I am working on. Let me know if you try this - and I'd love to see pictures of quilts with scrappy bindings!




And - my new listing for the day - Pastel Floral Checkbook Cover and Wallet

Have a wonderful Easter weekend. A friend summed it up well. The saddest day ever on earth came 3 days before the happiest one.

April Fools Club on Etsy!

I'm joining in with a group of people on Etsy who have made it a goal to add one new listing a day to their shop. Great goal, and a talented group of people - if you want to see the items check out this thread on the forums there. I sure hope this increases sales because I already see some stuff I want!

This is my listing for the day:


I made it using the last fat quarter of this fabric left in the quilt shop. So pretty, and very feminine. Soon I will be listing a checkbook cover and wallet that match, I need to go take some pictures while the sun is out - yes we have sun today!