Slow stashbusting

Seems I'm buying fabric at the same rate I'm using it, thus the stash is staying the same. Used some in swaps, bought more for another swap (I have few pastels) and took advantage of a buy 10 get 10 free fat quarter sale. I now have enough variety of 30s repros that I can feel comfortable that I need no more of that for current planned projects. I will need to buy some 30s repro solids, but that purchase can wait for some time.

I finally used up the game characters fabric, all 4.5 yards, in pillowcases. A quilt was probably 4 or 5 years away while a pillowcase could be enjoyed NOW! My sister is huge on gaming (Guild Wars), so I made her a pillowcase for her specialty pillow as well as 2 king sized ones. There was enough fabric left for my king sized pillow too!

New Years Eve Mystery

If you want to bust stash, try Bonnie's Mystery Quilt on New Years Eve Day! I'm not sure what color scheme I will be doing, but I hope to be able to bust stash on this.

Log Cabin Quilt top Done!

I finished the Log Cabin quilt top this week! I'm just waiting for a nicer day to lay out the backing, batting and top to roll up to tie (I need to do it outside). It is a queen sized quilt 82x96 inches and primarily made of stash. I swapped for many of these fabrics using stash in a 10 inch square fabric swap (green, gold, brick red and beige). Pieces were cut using Shar Jorgenson's (Quilting from the Heartland) Log cabin templates. Alas, this project did not use a lot of stash, but I had plenty for all the blocks. However, log cabins generally are great stash users especially if you have enough fabric of each type to do long strips.

Fabric Used:
8 yards for the blocks (stash)
1.5 yards black sashing (new)
3.5 yards border and binding (new)
7.5 yards flannel backing (new)

Tree Quilt using 2 Novelty Fabrics

Is it stashbusting when you deliberately bought fabric for a project and just didn't get around to it? Hard to say, but this pattern is stashbusting, so I'm including it.

Here is the Vikings Twee Top. I bought the deer and Vikings fabric in early 2007 deliberately for a quilt for my BIL and then didn't know how to combine it. The trees had been cut out for 5 or 6 years. I started doing the trees and had an AHA! moment. Deer, Vikings and trees have absolutely nothing in common but have everything in common with my BIL (Vikings fan, hunter and has 80 acres with lots of trees). Think about it. Do you have novelty fabrics you have no clue what to do with? Think about combining them based on someone's hobbies or interests.

This quilt used up 10.5 yards of stash fabric and 9 yards of newly purchased fabric. The remaining Vikings fabric goes with my sister to make an additional project. The flannel was a deal at $2.50 a yard and it is football fabric!

Fabric Used:
3.5 yards deer fabric for borders and binding (stash)
3 yards of Vikings fabric (stash)
4 yards estimate for tree blocks (stash)
1 yard purple block sashing (new)
1/2 yard dark purple narrow border (new)
7.5 yards flannel backing (new)

Pattern used (FREE!) at this website.
http://www.ezquilt.com/patterns/winterpines/winterpines.htm

Courthouse Steps

Here's a good scrapbustin' pattern! This particular model of Courthouse Steps came from a Moda University pattern and features a 12 inch finished block. Uses 1.5 inch strips for the 9 patches (3 inch finished) and 2 inch strips for the steps. The scrap border is made up of leftover 2 inch x 4.5 inch pieces. I did buy yellow sashing and the blue to avoid a Christmas look due to a lot of red and green, but all the rest came from stash. This quilt has been left in 3 pieces in order to make the quilting on my home machine much easier. Very surprisingly, the border exactly matched each piece. I was wondering how I was going to handle that and it became a non-problem!


Now, to see a more traditional courthouse steps, using all 1.5 inch strips, here's Bonnie's example. As you can see, a real scrapbuster if there ever was one!
http://quiltville.com/courthousestepsdone.jpg

Here's a link to a site that features log cabin as well as Courthouse Steps. Unless you are doing something really small, I cannot see how foundation piecing makes this better, although I see that it is a method that is popular.
http://www.equilters.com/library/logcabin/easy_log_cabin_part5.html

A Really Nice Quilt Idea

Occasionally, I come across a stashbusting quilt idea that is novel, but easy to do. This is a baby Rail Fence quilt with a twist. The quiltmaker is Stephanie Driel in Australia who is a member of our Stashbuster's group. She uses half-square triangles in the center of each rail. What a great way to use up fat quarters! This would look great even on a queen-sized quilt. Easily, this would go together very quickly with quick cutting techniques for the HSTs. The solid-from-a-distance fabrics really make this work for me as it gives the eye someplace to rest.

Rail Fence Busts Stash FAST!

I want to first point out the the example quilt was all new purchased fabric, not stash. That said, if you have novelty fabric or a large pattern you want to show off, this is a very fast pattern to make and would use stash quickly.

This was the original inspirational drawing done by a member of QATW in EQ5. I like the orientation of the rails as well.


To make my rail fence alternating blocks quilt, here's what you do. Fussy cut your novelty fabric(s) using a 6.5 inch square. If you have an overall pattern, you can just cut fabric into 6.5 inch strips, then subcut to squares. Select 3 (or more) solid-from-a-distance fabrics that look good with your novelty. Cut into 2.5 inch strips. Sew 3 strips together. Press to one side making certain that you don't don't get any little folds in the front. Using a 6.5 inch square, trim off selveges, then cut 6.5 inch squares. Repeat until you have enough rail fence blocks. Decide on an orientation and sew row-by-row. I start on the bottom and work up-I find it easier to catch mistakes along the way.