Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Official Start of Fall Sewing


Two Friends and One Heavenly Afternoon


Yesterday was the first official weekly meet up of the season in my studio. (I cleaned for TWO days! It was a great summer surrounded with my boxes of sewing stuff, but I buckled down for a serious cleaning at last.) Scraps still haven't been sorted, but they are in boxes at last. Out of sight, out of mind for now. Instead, we hit the stash for a quick strip quilt, and some satisfying sewing.


This pattern is from Fat Quarter Shop's free patterns, and called Chill Out by Zen Chic. It's a jelly roll pattern, but instead we chose 14 fabrics based on a pre-selected palette suggested by a paint chip card. Gigi ironed. I cut strips. She sewed. I cut and squared, and we both fussed with block placement. I can see it still needs a bit of tweaking to distribute the orange, but it's nearly there. How cool is that? The goal was to make a top for an older boy, and it would go into our charity quilt top stash. Mission accomplished.

This top will finish at 58" x 72". A nice size for a growing lad. 





Download your own free copy through the link above, and check out the many others. Get your sewing juices flowing!


K.I.S.S. 
Handy Tip to Know

The pattern calls for 5 strips at 2.5" sewn together lengthwise with 1/4" seams. Strip sewing quickly can result in less than perfect seams even when alternating the direction of sewing the strips. This pattern called for cutting the strip sets into 10.5" squares, but none of our strip sets actually hit that exactly. Instead, we opted to use 10.25" squares, and trimming our slightly wobbly edges on all 4 sides. You certainly can't tell a difference, and neither will anyone else. It saves the maker the grief of ripping, and gets the top done. And as we all know...done is better than perfect!

Happy Fall Sewing to You!
Come on, Doxie girls.
Let's go sew.

Linking up with~




10 comments:

Linda Swanekamp said...

Good to see a new project and almost done! Cleaning, yeah, I could use that also. Oct 4th and 5th is our guild's every three year quilt show, so I am finishing bindings and labels and have to photograph everone's work so we can lay the show out ahead of time. Straining to get some personal work done.

Barb N said...

Great idea to cut the blocks so you don't have to waste time fussy with them! This will be a fun quilt for a teenager. Congrats on getting your studio back in ship shape :)

Marsha Cooper said...

My scraps are everywhere! Until I get all the stuff out of my room that isn't mine, I can't really do too much.

Rebecca Grace said...

Hi, Julie! I love your "older boy top." Although this is one of those patterns where I'm kind of confused that it's being sold as a pattern with a new name. Isn't it just Fence Rails with a diagonal setting? I love your idea of trimming all of the blocks down to speed the process along. These are great colors; love the pops of orange.

Anja @ Anja Quilts said...

I like this pattern. Yours looks great.

Sandy Panagos said...

That's a great quilt. It could help use up a lot of scraps in my sewing room, too!

Yvonne said...

Done is the best and no one but you, and anyone will tell, will ever know that you adjusted the size of your blocks. I love the way a rail fence block is simple yet depending on the layout and number of rails can look complex as yours does.

KaHolly said...

It’s looking great, Julie! Team work is the best. I love it when a friend comes over to sew and I man the cutting table and ironing board. You’ve given me an idea here. I just pulled out my big bag of scraps, the one I dump the scrap basket into before I leave each winter. There are lots of different width strips in there just calling out to be sewn into something. Like I need to start something new right now!

Sarah Craig said...

Nice to see you back, especially with such a great quilt! And I bet you're enjoying a nice clean studio....

Alycia~Quiltygirl said...

That looks great! Tthe navy blue really sets those fabrics!