LEFTOVERS

I lived in the country when I was a girl and my mom was a stay-at- home mom.  She was also a great cook!!!  Even when our income was meager, she still managed to put together meals for us from leftovers.  Sometimes the leftovers were much better the second time around when she had added other ingredients to them and changed what they looked like the day before.

I have talked about the "drawer" in my sewing room that contains lots of leftovers.  Sometimes it is blocks, sometimes it is components of blocks, and sometimes it is simply scrap strips.

Here is what I found in the "drawer" the other day.

This is a leftover split 9-patch block made using batiks.

I looked around until I found a bin of leftover batik strips.

Then the fun began.

I decided to make a place mat with this block placed on point.

I could build it out by Quilt As You Go and Flip and Stitch.

The first thing I did was quilt this block.

Here is the way it looks on the back.

I thought this was pretty cool!!

Then I started adding strips to the four sides of the diamond.  I decided to reverse the value of the strips to the block.  Light against dark and dark against light.

Since I was using Stitch and Flip Method here, I did not need to add any more quilting.

I really like how it looks.  And on the back it looks pretty neat too.

I pulled some strips out of the bin and made the binding.

I decided to complete the binding on the machine to make it sturdier because this place mat will get a lot of washing.

Of course, there is only one of these, but I don't mind that every one's place mat is different at my house!!  After all, this was a practice piece for trying some straight-line quilting and using up some leftovers.

                                                     -sandi

AND WE SAID . . .

thank you to our friends across the street.

Several weeks ago my husband had two total hip replacement surgeries.  Oh, yes, he is doing very well.  Enjoying his freedom of movement and no pain.

During this time we still had lawn to mow and trimming to do.  Our wonderful neighbors across the street came to our rescue.  Not only did they mow and trim, but as the season progressed, they fertilized and did the fall over seeding for us.  Thank you so much!!!!

We wanted to do something for them to let them know how much we appreciated all of their efforts to keep our lawn maintained and looking so nice.

I decided to make them a quilt.  I chose to use a split 9-Patch block and designed it into a double star pattern.  It is a controlled scrappy block made with batiks.

Finally, I had it finished and  we gave it to them today.

They said they liked it!!  It was such a good feeling to give them something that I had created.

                                     -sandi

GOING SCRAPPY

Last weekend I went to the Grand Oak Retreat Center in Scottsboro, Alabama for four wonderful, fun-filled days of sewing and creating.

There were ladies from Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi working on quilting.  We did have a lady from Alabama who was a scrapbooker.  She did some beautiful alphabet pages for a gift for a friend's Christmas.

Look at this beautiful view overlooking the Tennessee River.  We gathered on this porch most mornings to have our first cup of coffee, tea, or soda.

This was our workroom.  There were fourteen of us having a ball.

All of us worked on our individual projects.  I took a project with me that was very scrappy -- anything goes kind of scrappy.  I was working with split-nine-patch blocks with a few regular 9-patch blocks thrown in.

I spent two days before retreat cutting out several hundred squares and making a large number of half-square triangles so I could start right into sewing. 

I lined up everything on my sewing machine table and started making my blocks.

This is what it looked like under my machine as I chain pieced the nine-patch blocks together.

This was my finished top.  I love the friendship star in the center.  I don't think I will add any borders.  It looks more interesting without a border.

Now on to doing the back and binding it.  Looking at the drawer of left-over bindings and thinking I might could use some of them. 

 This is the second one of this pattern that I have made and each one looks a little different.  I really do like it!!!!


                                              -sandi