I told you

it would be soon!

Here it is on the bed. This duvet cover is covering this down alternative comforter. I am very very allergic to feathers and down so I have always had to 'do' down alternative.

After having slept under this comforter for several nights, I have come to the realization that this is a dead-of-winter blanket. The room must be under 65°F. If the temps are higher then a window will have to be opened. :)

But all-in-all, I love my new comforter and duvet cover.

Design Wall Monday, January 20, 2014

What is on my design wall? A very big duvet cover. My wall is 8'x8' and these flannel blocks cover the whole thing plus a bit more wall (see the blue painter's tape on the left?). The finished cover will be 88x104 which is 2 inches smaller all around.

This really needs some rearranging! I was able to get all the blocks up on the wall, but realized that I was two half blocks short. And I really don't like all the pine cone fabric blocks (featured here in this post), it is almost too many. But, there are several more flannels in the bin that I can cut into blocks and substitute here and there. I don't know if I want to go as dark as that block on the right; there are only two of those blocks and they can come out and be replaced with another green.

In the left foreground you can see my HQS16 and just behind it on the table is the next quilt to be quilting. Several weeks ago I accepted a top from a lady in my quilting group to quilt. It has been weighting heavy on my mind that I haven't done anything to it, so yesterday I got it basted and it will be quilted soon.

In fact, yesterday I pin basted three more baby quilts. Many many moons ago I purchased several kits made with Daisy Kingdom fabrics (remember that fabric line) and I found them again yesterday morning when straightening up the sewing room. They have aged long enough and need to be out of this house, so I got them all pin basted and added to the pile to quilt, which, incidentally, now has ten quilts in it. Must quilt.

The good thing about getting all these flannel blocks onto the wall, is that now I can look at them and come up with a pleasing design. When I quilt at the HQS16, I like to glance away now and then to rest my eyes and I can look at this when I do it.

What's on your design wall?

Visit JudyL at Patchwork Times to see what others have on their design walls..

Not an exciting design wall

So what are these? Flannel blocks. It is flannel that had be destined for a different project and a good thing I over purchased on the quantity.

A while back, I purchased a "seems-like" down comforter. I can't do a down comforter because of a feather allergy. I knew the comforter needed protection because it was white. White? And so, the idea was born to make a duvet cover.

All would have been well, except I read my notes wrong and only cut 48 blocks at 13" square. It should have been 14" with the seam allowances included. Arggh! Back to EQ7 for the figuring. A duvet cover made of just squares shouldn't be hard, right? Wrong.

Since the comforter is 106x90 I needed to make the cover 104x88 + a flange or flap or something for the closure. The closure, BTW, is snap tape. I decided to take it easy on myself, because the last one I made used buttons and buttonholes. Oh, and it wasn't smaller than the comforter which made for Troubles with a capital T.

It turns out that the final block count needed to be 75 at 11x11.5 cutting size. I know, right? I had to put tape on my large square cutting ruler to show me where to cut so no more mistakes would be made. And since the blocks were now a smaller and different size, the half blocks needed to be cut again also. Half blocks? Well, I designed this 'simple' cover as a strippie and utilized the dropped block so there wouldn't be any matching of seams.

Do you remember that this is flannel? Flannel ravels and there will be a lot of that going on since this is a duvet cover and not a quilt. I will be serging these block together so that all seams will be encased thus removing that little problem. I hope.

Wish me luck on this little project. Visit here for more lovely project on design walls.

Is this a UFO?

Would you consider this a UFO? The quilt is designed and in the manilla folder and all the fabrics have been pulled. It has been dormant in a bin for over a year.

Quilt #3

I've been hiding in the sewing room for the last several days. I turned off the television and turned on the music in the sewing room which made me uber productive. Wanna see?

This is the Harley Davidson bandana quilt. It started with the brand new, but vintage, bandana in the center. After adding some corners to square it up - plus the applique - I just started adding borders. Six borders! This quilt is approximately 62" square and is backed with more of that butterfly fabric. I can't believe how well the butterfly fabric goes with the floral band of the bandana. It IS square, I just had a problem pinning it to the wall.

Thread: Signature 40wt
Quilting: Free motion roses.

Once that was off and folded up I go started on a flannel quilt. This one is for my sister who requested a warm but lightweight quilt. After mulling it over in my mind, I decided to use up some flannel scraps and make a fairly simple quilt top.

 

The squares finish at 7". Can you believe the assortment of flannel? I couldn't either. I am going to tie this because of previous experiences with flannel. No batting but a Minkee backing. This one is going together quickly.

Anything on your design wall?

Scrap Quilting

Over at With Heart and Hands, Michele is showcasing the concept of the simple Scrap Quilt. I love scrap quilts. Scrap quilting eases my soul and is a very green thing to do. Our fore-mothers made scrap quilts because of the readily available source of fabric in left overs. So, for me, even when a quilt is a planned commission quilt all the scraps go into the bucket for later use.

The first quilt shown was made for TheKid. Through the years of making flannel boxer shorts for him and flannel shirts for his dad, a large collection of flannel scraps was amassed. This is the resulting quilt. Then the flannel log cabin quilt for CarGuy was made. Notice that it is tied; he kept popping the quilting stitches so the quilting was picked out and it was tied instead. This worked better as the tied spots allowed the flannel to stretch. The final flannel quilt is a nine patch and snowball quilt for myself that was later given away. New flannel needed to be purchased for the snowballs and borders. Guess where the scraps went? Each of these quilts is a utility quilt, not meant for show but to be used. And used they have been -- the log cabin quilt is practically worn out. But that is why they were made.

I encourage you to go over to Michele's blog and following the links in the comment section and read how they deal with scraps.