15 Finishes for February

I spent the holiday weekend (Louis Riel Day in Manitoba)

making a dozen of these needle books

I used up scraps and sewing prints and little bits of patchwork

to make each one slightly different.

I use wool felt for the inside pages.

I love the saturation of colour in the wool.

I used to make them from selvage dots like the one at the left,

but now I make mini quilts. 

The one at the top used leftover blades from a Dresden project

on a Westminster Liberty Art fabric.

That one had flown off to QuiltCon as a gift for someone

before I got the picture of all 12 together.

I also said goodbye to this little guy,

who didn't mind sitting in the snow in his new track suit.

He is now fully clothed and has a new home.

I started this quilt at a retreat in January and finished it two weeks later.

It has a pink Eden print by Tula Pink on the back.

Here's the front, made from one and a half charm packs and hourglass blocks in two colours.

It is a really simple quilt with a great visual effect. 

The two grey colours make on point squares around the charm squares,

making the quilt look like it was set on point.

Here you can see the beginnings on my design wall.

I spent 45 minutes quilting this top which had sat in a drawer for two years.

I used a Warm and Natural batting and a micro fleece for the backing.

I'm donating it to an organization outfitting people affected by recent apartment building fires.

I figure there's some little kid out there that will have fun driving on these roads.

And my last finish:

A Valentine placemat for my mom, made from a set of charms with love and heart themes.

Here she is with it and her birthday roses.

She turned 82 on Valentine's Day.

A huge Friday finish!

I have a huge finish to share:

This scrappy log cabin made in a quilt as you go style.

Members of my quilt guilt started this project in September,

and at our March meeting, we hand sewed the binding down.

It has about 2,500 pieces, all from our scrap bags

and the batting is all 3 inch strips leftover from other quilts.

Here are my binding buddies!

We only purchased fabric for the binding, 

since no one had the right colour in their stash.

It is backed with wide backing flannel in dark grey.

The quilt has 36 blocks measuring 15 inches,

and all of them are joined by 1 inch strips.

Read more about the technique here.

I participated in the rainbow mini challenge at Winnipeg Modern Quilt Guild,

and I used my leftovers to make two needle books.

I've been machine quilting a surprise baby quilt,

and I'm pleased to have finished all the quilting a month before the baby is due.

I still need to trim and bind it.

This is not a finish, but a start.

My mom spray basted this quilt in Sept. 2016 

and I promised to quilt it in time for my niece's high school graduation the following June.

Well, I didn't make that deadline

but I did start quilting it yesterday.

Nobody to blame but me,

and ongoing neck issues from whiplash injuries.

I'm linking up with other Friday finishers at

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Crazy Mom Quilts

TGIFF

Bunch of Friday finishes

Last weekend a friend came over to play with my Juki.

We each made a "placemat with benefits" for our Singer Featherweights

from my Kaffe scraps.

Here's mine, with a few other bits thrown in.

I dug through the binding bag for leftover purples to finish this.

I quilted the back using the prints on top as inspiration.

When I was learning to fmq, I made several of these mats as practice.

Here it is underneath my FW 222K.

In preparation for T's visit, I cleaned up my sewing room

and found a bunch of nearly finished needle books underneath the clutter.

So I finished them, and made the four on the bottom

from bits and pieces.

See the Kaffe pencils on the bottom row?

This is the inside of one -- pockets for thimbles or thread

and several pages of wool for pins and needles.

I'm giving away two of these to celebrate seven years of blogging.

I'm linking up with TGIFF and Sarah and Crazy Mom Quilts.

Seven year giveaway!

Today marks seven years since I started this blog

and took on a new identity as Scraps and Strings.

Lots of thread has flowed through the needle since then.

I'm marking today with a giveaway of two needlebooks.

They have pockets inside for a spool of thread or a thimble.

and several pages of wool for your needles and pins.

I've made some more since the original posting yesterday

so let me know which one you might like.

I've given away dozens of these before.

Some with selvage dots,

others with scraps of fun prints or words.

How to win one:

Just leave a comment, but if you can,

let me know how your read the blogs you subscribe to.

I'm not happy with Bloglovin as a reader.

What else is out there?

Please tell me what you use and how I can transfer to that reader.

or if you use Bloglovin,

how can I make it work better for me?

I'm finding not all the blogs I follow show up there.

Oh, and those of you who are followers get a second entry 

by leaving a second comment that you're following.

And if you're someone from Winnipeg,

you get an extra entry.

A friendly warning: We may have to meet to get your prize, lol!

Deadline is midnight Friday, February 13.

I'm linking up to the WIP Wednesdays at The Needle and Thread Network.

Would you like to win a (needle)book?

I have a half dozen Friday finishes today,

but they're quite small.

Here's my latest set of needlebooks

made from selvages and little interesting scraps.

 

I've made dozens of these over the years

to give away to my quilty friends

and today I'm giving one to one of you in blogland.

I passed my six-year blogiversary a month ago

and decided it was time to celebrate.

 

International entries welcome.

Tell me which one you would like and why.

(I've already given away the middle one in the second row.)

If you're a follower, leave me another comment.

 

I'll pick a winner on Sunday, March 9.

 

I'm linking up to Sarah and TGIFF.

Snowflakes for the last day in February

It may be nearly spring where you are,

but where I live in the northern wilds

snow is still piled up high.

So there's still time to finish and show you my snowflake project.

 

A tea cozy and needle book, both from selvages from snowflake fabric.

Here's the other side, with the selvages which didn't have a white edge

and a die-cut snowflake from my friend Norma.

Here's the inside of the tea cozy

and the inside of the needlebook,

before I sewed in the wool felt pages for the needles and pins.

 

I'm linking up to Sarah and Amanda.

Little finishes

I've been sewing this week, but didn't post because

 DD2 had possession of my camera for a school project.

I finished two little zippy bags of word fabrics and

three selvage needlecases

I chose to use only the colour windows on these.

I also finished the second sewing machine hanging,

this one for my room.

The chaotic background mimics the usual chaos in my sewing space.

Here are both of them together. I'm giving away the one at the left.

but you can see I haven't made it to the mailbox yet. Oops.

A detail of the little quilt in progress in the hanging.

The squares are 1.5 inches, so the little daisies are quite small.

I'm linking up with Amanda's Finish it Fridays.

Giving back on my blogiversary

Today is exactly three years since I started this blogging adventure. At first I was worried I wouldn't have enough quilts to keep posting, but hanging out here in the blogosphere has provided me with lots of ideas and inspiration. I want to give you some of that back with a little needle case, like the ones pictured below.

Here's how you can win one -- be a follower! If you are a lurker, sign up to be a follower and leave a comment, and if you are already a follower and would like a chance to win, let me know in the comments. Please make sure I have a way to reach you. I'll pick two winners on Monday, Feb. 14.

Smale scale projects

After completing some big projects at my retreat, this week I've been concentrating on little ones. At left is an Amish style one patch made from one inch squares. It is handquilted in freehand fans and bound and will be donated to the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative.
(For anyone interested in the quilts at my retreat, head over to visit Prairie Peasant to see her posts on the retreat. I kept forgetting my camera in my room, three flights up.)

I've had lots of entries for my selvage needle book giveaway (scroll down two posts since you can still enter), but I gave three away at my retreat, so I decided to make some more. As I was looking through my selvages, I found some with lots of words and so I kept sewing the same selvage piece to itself because it just worked.

That Metropolitan Museum of Art selvage had the words repeated continually, so I just kept using it and it provides lots of text on this needlecase cover.
And then I kept going with more the continuous selvage look. I also made one with little bits and pieces of solids in a wonky Amish style. Working with a small 5 by 9 canvas is quite fun, and if you don't like the idea, just move on.

Retreat and two year blog anniversary

I'm off to my quilt retreat this weekend, and to prepare, I made a few gifts for some special folks, including you. As regular blog readers will know, I love scraps and string piecing and even selvages, and so I made some needle cases with string pieced covers, based on one Purple Pam sent me. The insides feature some needle and thread fabric and two pages of wool felt from that lovely giveaway I won from the C and T Publishing blog before Christmas. In a week, it's the second anniversary of my blogging adventure, and I'm happy to share some of these needle cases, plus a string pieced tea cozy with you. All I need is a comment on this blog about which you'd prefer(cozy or case) and a way to contact you. No posting on your own blog or becoming a follower unless you really want to. I'll draw for winners on Monday, Feb. 8.

Here's my pile of spiderweb string blocks, all ready to be put together at the retreat. I never found the missing triangles, so I made some more.