Quarantine Projects   

For some reason, during these last 6 weeks of quarantine, I haven’t felt like working on big projects.  It would be the perfect time to finish up a bunch of UFOs, but what do I do?  Start a bunch of new things.  Little things that I can finish quickly.  For example, the picture below shows the projects that I made last weekend. 

What was I thinking, making a St. Patrick’s Day pillow at the end of April? Well, I had the fabric for the front, border and back all cut out since the week before St. Patrick’s Day, but just couldn’t decide what to put on the front.  Then, last week,  I saw the Irish Blessing embroidery file on sale, and that decided it!  I knew that if I let the project sit until next year, I would lose it somewhere, so I just went ahead and made it.  Next time, I’ll use a different stabilizer, because the embroidery pulled a little too much and left some wrinkles which I can’t iron out. 

The cute little owl stuffie has a pocket in the front, so I think that I will sit it on the end table and use it to hold my embroidery scissors or maybe a few crochet hooks.

The trivet is made out of fabric twine, which I started making a couple of years ago. It is a great way to use up those thin strips of fabric that you hate to throw away, but are too small to use for much of anything.  I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with it, but it is a good project to make when you are sitting in front of the TV and don’t want to have to concentrate on what you are working on, but can’t stand to just sit in front of the TV. One day last week, I saw a video on Debby Brown’s website (https://www.debbybrownquilts.com/) where she made coasters and trivets out of fabric twine.  Until I saw that video, I didn’t think that a needle would go through the twine because it is so tightly twisted.  Her twine is twisted a little more loosely than mine, but I figured that I would try it to see what would happen.  I’m happy to report that I only broke one needle.  ^.^  This trivet is about 8 inches across, and it only used one smallish ball of the twine that I have made so far. And I have tons of narrow strips to make more twine.  There might be a rug in my future….

Anyway, this week’s Project Quilting Quarantine theme is Vintage. I looked up the definition of Vintage.  There doesn’t seem to be a consensus, but one definition is something that is at least 20 years old. 

In the early 2000’s, I was part of an online swap group for what at the time were called ‘nickel squares’.  The intent of the group was to get a variety of fabrics to make the quilts in the book “Nickel Quilts” by Pat Speth and Charlene Thode.  This was well before charm packs were introduced.  I think that the swap was run in Yahoo Groups. A theme was announced, and then you would go into the site and sign up for the swap if you were interested.  From what I recall, you would need to cut 5 (or 6?) different fabrics into 5-inch squares, pair up the squares, keep a pair cut from each fabric for yourself and send the rest to the quilter who was in charge of the swap.  She would then switch them all around and send you back the same number of nickel squares that you sent in, but they would all be fabrics from other quilters.  It was rather convoluted, but it was a good way to get the variety of squares needed to make the quilts in the Nickel Quilts book. 

I swapped and I swapped, but somehow, I never made any of the quilts. But I have found other uses for the nickel squares, so all the work was worth it in the end.

Anyway, I still have a whole bin full of those nickels. I’m not sure that they are quite 20 years old, but since the PQQ rules can be loosely followed, I am calling them Vintage!  Here is the table runner that I made using some of my vintage nickel squares.  It was made from a brilliant pattern designed by Gudrun Erla called L’il Kim.  The brilliant part is that it uses a charm pack with no extra fabric to make a table runner!  I used 20 dark and 20 cream nickel squares instead of a charm pack, and I really like the way that it turned out.