Yesterday, I took advantage of the liquidation sale at our local JoAnn’s Store. They are moving to a new location and selling off their entire inventory in the process!
Among other things I snatched up were a box of 300 curved basting pins so I could get started on the baby quilt. My wonderful mother gave me a couple bags full of quilt batting scraps from past projects. I found a few that, whip-stitched together, were just the right size.
I’m still not sure exactly how I want to hand-quilt this bad boy, so it’s sitting pretty on the ironing board with a spool of thread. Part of the procrastination is fear. The bottom quilt layer is a vintage crib sheet of which the fabric is knit. I don’t know how well knits quilt, and I’m afraid to find out! The thing is, I didn’t want to use regular old quilter’s cotton for the backing. But if the crib sheet is more trouble than it’s worth, I’ll dig through my stash for something more suitable.
It was hard to make the first cut into my blankie, but I did it! I decided to make Shoo Fly Blocks for this quilt. Each center square is a different scene from the blanket, nine in all.
Yesterday found me sitting at the sewing table with my rotary cutter, making sure each square and half-triangle square was perfect. It took a while to sandwich and mark all of the half-triangle squares.
While I was sewing all 18 sandwiches, I remembered watching my mother while she worked on her sewing projects. She used to make and sell stuffed toys and I remember watching her sew stacks of pieces all at once and put them all together assembly-line style.
So that’s how I did it: I just fed all of the sandwiches through the machine, one after the other and cut them apart when they were all done. Efficient!
I only managed to finish one block before the household erupted into its usual evening chaos. I’m still not sure exactly how I want to quilt this. Perhaps I should just quilt the white squares and leave the flannels untouched. Or quilt everything but the center squares so that they really pop. I’ll mull over it for a few days while I finish piecing.
I’ve had these blankies sitting around for what seems like ages. My mom gave them to me during one of her famous purges and I haven’t been able to figure out what to do with them. Since they were mine when I was a baby, there’s no way on earth I’d just chuck them, even if they are tattered and pretty darn sad looking. I also didn’t want to incorporate them into just anything, so on they sat through several linen-closet-clean-outs until I finally pulled them out today to really examine them.
I spent time studying the fabrics and gushing over the sweetness of this simple receiving blanket. It’s got bears and bunnies in several cute gardening scenes. Cutting and piecing these will be a little tricky because I want to incorporate every scene I can and leave nothing behind except the holes and stains.
As for the other two blankets, I want to salvage the lace and ribbons somehow, but I haven’t yet decided how to do it. Most of the fabric in these will either frame the bunnies and bears. While I figure out exactly what I want to do, I’ll spend time admiring others’ adorable quilts like this one I found this morning. I adore the blocks! Well. I pretty much adore everything about it!
So I guess I’m over the honeymoon period I had with knitting. Don’t get me wrong: I’m still knitting! My carpal tunnel syndrome has become almost excruciating at times, though, and I can’t let a day go by without doing something crafty!
Yesterday, I took advantage of the liquidation sale at our local JoAnn’s Store. They are moving to a new location and selling off their entire inventory in the process! 
