Work to do

I just put this together this morning.  It will not be quilted for a while but I hope I can do it before February 1st.  Yesterday I finished the fall semestet at the Academy for Lifelong Learning.  The next semester (spring which makes me smile as I look out the window at our first snowfall of the winter) begins Feb.1. Meanwhile I have many things I hope to do with quilting high on the to-do list. I finished this quilt top this morning. I think it has a very "modern" look but actually it was designed in 1945, by Laura Wheeler and printed in several newspapers.  It was revived with a paper piecing pattern by Jean Nolte for Fons and Porter's Fat Quarters magazine and printed several months ago.  I love paper piecing and I love quilts where I can use my extensive scrap fabric collection so I have enjoyed making this very much. 

Here are four other quilts I've made in the last eight or twelve months lying on top of the asterisk quilt. They all need quilting. I began hand tieing the checkerboard quilt last winter but have less than a quarter of it done. The strip quilt in the middle is from a design by Karen Griska of The Selvage Blog (see sidebar). It has been sandwiched with batting and a back. I will quilt it probably before the asterisk one, some kind of very, very simple quilting.

The two quilts behind were made just to use up scraps, the one with pink stripping was to use up floral pieces that I don't think I'll use any other way. and the other quilt, a log cabin variation was because I had a collection of pinwheels and wanted to use more scraps.  I really, really adore scrap piecing.  Some things become uninteresting once sewn together and that is the case with the last two.  I may give them away as is and hope they'll find a home that will quilt them.

This final quilt is small, 30x30 and obviously not quilted yet.  This is called "Variations on an Amish theme" and is my contribution to the Uncommon Threads group's challenge for doing something that mixes modern and traditional. So the middle square (a starbusrst, paper pieced, designed by Carol Doak) is all the well known Amish colors.  The rest is "modern" with fabrics in modern prints. The colors are not quite true in the photo. I loved sifting through scraps to find the various fabrics. I will begin quilting this later today or maybe tomorrow. (I really have to write some Christmas cards).  Of the many things I've been doing with scraps this gives me the most pleasure. I like making smallish quilts. I do not like quilting -- especially the busy, busy kind of quilting that is currently so much in fashion (due to long arm machines that make the quilting so much faster and fancier).  I do not have a long am and am sure I never will want one.

How much can I do by February 1?  I'm afraid it won't be all.  Oh, and I have another scrap quilt started ... of course ....