Design Wall Monday - Liberated Strips

This is what I accomplished over the weekend. Can you believe all the different flannel scraps I had in the scrap bin?

Have you made one of those quilts that uses a 2.5" strip bundle? This quilt top happens to be from some 3" flannel strips that were stashed away. This quilt will finish at 55 x 72: perfect for a donation quilt. I still need to find a backing for it, but in the meantime, it is getting added to the quilt top pile.

I'll give you a hint: when I work with flannel in a quilt, I deepen my seams. Instead of 1/4" seams I make 3/8" seams. So the 3" strips in this quilt top actually finished at 2 1/4". Why do I deepen the seams? Flannel is a loosely woven fabric and will ravel easily so deeper seams will help mitigate that raveling and keep the seams from falling apart. I know this because there is a well loved flannel quilt in my home and several of the seams have pulled apart.


I realized as I was making this top that I wasn't enjoying the process. I need to have a plan and some order. Randomness like this just drives me nuts, my eyes don't know where to stop. It isn't even 'square'! I suppose that is my control issue rearing it's ugly head, isn't it?

I'm linking up to Design Wall Monday

Trick or Treat!

Did that get your attention? One project down and one to go.

Remember when I posted about Finn's New Year's Eve UFO Challenge? Thinking it was doable, I committed to finishing two projects. This is the larger of the two projects, coming in at 60"x60". It is my first real attempt at liberated piecing in the form of the words.

The last year was spent working on those stitched blocks every other Friday at bee and they are obviously different sizes. I used twisted frames to bring them all up to a consistent size. One block got twisted in the other direction, but I left it alone. I made one too many blocks so the extra one was turned into a label for the back.

Some of the designs came from various internet sites, some were clipart, and some were my designs. To see a full version of the blocks (and to be able to read them) click on the corresponding links below the photo mosaic.

1. Halloween001-th, 2. Halloween0009-th, 3. Halloween0003-th, 

  4. Halloween0004-th, 5. Halloween0002-th, 6. Halloween0005-th, 

7. Halloween0006-th, 8. Halloween0007-th, 9. Halloween0008-th

I am either way behind or getting ready for next year

This is one of the Focus Projects in Finn's New Year's Eve UFO challenge. For lack of a better name it is just called the Hallowe'en quilt. So what are you looking at here? Well, these are the various strips to make some liberated letters for a very appropriate Hallowe'en phrase along the border. This quilt is totally from the fabric stash but I managed to have enough of the same fabric for the background of the letters and the frames for the blocks in the center of the quilt. Imagine that! The two main orange fabrics even somewhat resemble each other and are a much closer match in color than what you see in the photos.

Here's a sneak peak at one of the blocks. These blocks are embroidered and dye painted. Some of the blocks are my design and others are pulled from various sources including but not limited to Bird Brain Designs and Kaaren of the Painted Quilt.

Remember when I was asking for quilting ideas in a recent post?  This is the quilt I had in mind. As you can see there are words; in fact, each of the blocks has words on it. This is a very wordy quilt. Anyway, I still haven't decided how to quilt this thing. I'm still open to suggestions.