Progress Report: Greening of the Batt

I've designed and gotten the blocks for the yellow monochromatic challenge assembled.

I've quilted and made the binding for UFO # 6 - and hope by monday to have that done.  To get there I had to come up with batting for the 36" quilt and I did it by salvaging(aka as greening, lol) some batting from my batt bag.  I'll never understand why batting companies can't come up with more usable sizes of batting than what they sell(52 x 64 would be my preferred size - what's yours?), but then I guess it would be too hard to come up with all the sizes we need.  So I usually have strips of batting left over which I save.  I'm sure you must too cuz we're always saving scraps of fabric, aren't we?

So I went through the bag and pulled out batt strips of the same kind of batting and laid them out on the floor.  I had 3 strips and one small square of fabric which when laid out gave me a 38" overall square.  Taking these to my cutting table I added the square to one strip to make it long enough.  I learned this method from Marti Michell in her book:  Machine Quilting in Sections  It's a great book. So first I overlapped the two sections I wanted to join, and with my rotary cutter cut a wavy line in the center of the overlap.

Here's what they look like separated. 

Throw away the bits left over from the cut overlap and fit the two piece together again.

Now I take a strip of fusible interfacing and lay it over the cut.

Here I'm showing you the piece longer than the batting but that is just to show the interfacing.  When I iron it on, the top edge meets the top edge of the batting and the bottom edge is trimmed to the bottom edge, and one can hardly see it.  Now I have a piece long enough to use for my 38" batting square.  I attached the strips to the larger rectangle in the same way, and I had my batting for my ufo sandwich.

I know others just line up the two sections and zigzag them together, but the edges are never straight enough and I got bumps here and there and with hi loft batting the zigzag stitch tended to flatten the batting at the seam.  This way one can't even tell where the joints are. 

Design Wall 1/3/11 - Yellow Monochromatic Challenge

On my design wall is my Yellow Monochromatic Challenge.  I just pulled yellows and cut blocks rapidly and this is what I got: 

I liked the blue one posted elsewhere so much I went with the same design except mine is going to be raw edge applique as I quilt as I go.  Will measure 30" square and will go to our NICU center.   Taking a picture sure shows how colors differ from what the eye sees.  The print in the bottom left corner looks yellow to me as that is the background, but in the picture most of what you see is the little blue butterflies.  What do you think?

First Stash Report for 2011

Well, I worked on the monochromatic challenge and guesstimate I used about 1.5 yards of yellow from my stash and bought a fat quarter from Jo Anns, so:

Used/Donated this week:         1.5 yards
Used/Donated Yr to date:        1.5 yards

Added this wk:                      -  .25 yards
Total Yr to date added:          -  .25 yards
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Total Used Yr to date              1.25 yards

Did I do that right?

LOL
Happy New Year,
AngieN
ps:  I have almost free books (cost of postage only) over at my blog as part of my stash if your interested.
http://quiltingreadersgarden.blogspot.com/