a maiden hair fern: Crumb quilt

Showing posts with label Crumb quilt. Show all posts

Friday, March 19, 2021

Washington D.C. quilt w/ scrap crumb top

Scraps here, scraps there, scraps everywhere. They seem to grow like weeds! The more you use them, the more you seem to have!!

I went on a scrap quilt spree last year. I've always wanted to try making a scrap crumb quilt, so when I saw it come up as a "come along" by Amanda at Crazy Mom Quilts, I decided to join in.

Here is the link is the link to the post about my scrap crumb experience, which I had a lot of fun with. It's pretty funny to watch a person's face as they look at a scrap vortex quilt and try to figure out a pattern, or where the blocks are, if they don't know how to make one.

On the back, I wanted to try something I hadn't quilted before. A map. A map of Washington D. C.

I ordered several maps online, and narrowed down the area I wanted to quilt.

I wasn't sure how to tackle this beast, but I knew it started with blowing up this map. I decided on a finished size and set off to find a printer that could help me.

After several tries, I found a printer that could think outside the box. He came up with printing the map on 20 sheets of paper, measuring 12x18 inches. I found some great colors of felt for rivers and parks, and different colored threads for the different roads, and labeling landmarks.

I laid the map out and taped it together in rows.

I used Golden Threads Quilting Paper to transfer the information that I wanted to quilt onto the fabric. I started with the Potomac River, then the major freeways, then smaller roads, and finally landmarks.

There was a lot of down time, as it took me a while to figure out how to create what I saw in my head.

This quilt and map of Washington D.C. represents a history of 2 people coming together. A baby was conceived and placed for adoption. A lovely family adopted this baby and this child grew up in the suburbs north of Washington D.C. Meanwhile, the birth mother took a job in Washington and lived west of the city. This quilt is a history of where those 2 people lived their lives.

It includes places of residence, burial places, airports . . .

places of worship, and places of education . . .

It includes places of birth, work places and the gloriousness that our nation's capital has to share.

This quilt was presented to the birthmother after over 50 years of not knowing what happened to her child.

Thursday, January 17, 2019

100 day crumb quilt-along

100 days? really? Making a crumb quilt is so addicting! After 30 days, I had enough for 2 queen size quilts!! That's A LOT of therapy, folks! And all for FREE!!! No buying fabric. Pull out ALL your scraps, even from those nooks and crannies, the ones that you were saving as a set just cuz you might use them some day.

You start by sewing 2 pieces together that are the same size, and look good together. And you do that for a long time. The idea is that if you are sewing 2 pieces together that are squared before sewing, you won't have a bunch of trimming to do after you press. (keep your long scissors close to your machine, and square pieces as you choose them, no pressing)

Then after you've done a bunch, you take those together and do the same thing. Find pieces that are about the same size, and look good next to each other, and sew them together. For. a. long. time.

Then you do it again, and again, and again. Oh my . . . some of those fabrics are VERY old!

Till you decide to put them all up on your design board and you realize that you have enough to make several quilts!!!

It's quite a messy process, which is why I found that I couldn't work on anything else at the same time.

My regular machine is getting a check up. This Singer Featherweight was made in the Czech Republic in the 40's. It sews a solid stitch, never wavering, a very good back-up. You can find them on e-bay, and they are relatively easy to maintain. Notice my big scissors there, you will need to keep them in a handy place to help square up pieces. You don't have to be exact, just eye-ball it. Seam allowances don't really matter.

Towards the end, you'll have big squares that you try to fit together like a big puzzle. You night need to trim some back or add to one to make it fit into the your finished top.

When you think you've had enough, and you can fit all the pieces together to make a good size quilt, you give it a good starchy pressing, and "stay-stitch" all around the circumference.

I have not quilted these 2 crumb quilt tops, but I have cool plans for their back and quilting process. You will read about those at a later date.

I learned this technique from the amazing Amanda at Crazy Mom Quilts. You can find her instructions here. Thank you Amanda! We miss you :(

In Amanda's blog posts on Crumb quilts, she gave us permission to throw away scraps that we didn't like. You know, we hang onto them because you can't waste them. Hmmmmmm, one of those scraps is probably worth maybe a nickel. If you hold it up and it doesn't bring you joy? ** Thank it and throw it out!!!! WOW! It felt sooooo good to throw out those few scraps that have been haunting my scrap bag all these years. And I will like those crumb quilt tops for years to come, cuz I didn't try to fit ugly scraps into them that I just couldn't throw away.