Freezer Bag Quilt

 

After Christmas, I turned back to my quilting projects.  I have found with quilting that I like having projects at different stages.  At times I fear I am getting as obnoxious as my mom.  The jury is still out about that.  Anyway, I can’t spend an entire day tying knots because my hands hurt after a long period of time.  Thus, I have a knotting project in one room.  In the other room, I use my sewing machine on the latest project.  Since I can go from one to the other, I am making pretty good time.

 

 

This wall hanging is a bit hilarious.  When I threw it in an unfinished box, the quilting fluff was showing; yet, a sleeve had been sewn on to hang the piece.  I pulled it out to put the binding on.  I cut some black fabric that I had to buy.  I cut all the edges.  At some point during all of this, I flipped it over.  Mom had sewn a tag on the back that said it was finished in 1995.  I realized the quilt fluff was supposed to be the spider webbing.  Opps.  At this point I had already blocked it.  Jerry and Madelle didn’t like Mom’s look, so I continued to bind the edges.  I did work that didn’t need done.  Oh well.  Now it is nice and tidy. 

 

The Valentine wall hanging had me a pit nervous.  A needle and thread had been placed in the spot Mom had left off hand stitching.  When I decided I need to face my fear of hand stitching, I realized I needed to finish up the edge of two blocks and two hearts.  I knew my stitches wouldn’t look as good as Mom’s.  I turned on my music and began the job.  Low and behold, a person would have to look hard to find the differences between our stitches.  I am not that bad at hand stitching.  I won’t earn any prices, but I can hold my own.

 

 

This quilt will always make me laugh.  I call it the freezer bag quilt.  When I began unpacking and going through Mom’s unfinished projects, I was organizing cut fabric, quilt blocks, projects that needed quilted, projects that needed binding, and put the in-between throughout the mix.  Well, as my pile of cut strips of fabric grew and grew, I became extremely overwhelmed.  When I filled an entire section of my area to keep the strips, I pulled out a gallon freezer bag filled with strips.

 

 

I almost felt like burning everything right then and there.  I needed to feel I was making progress.  I opened the bag and grabbed two strips of fabric and sewed them together at the ends.  I kept adding pieces with the same technique that I used for Jerry’s quilt.  Within a couple of days, I had the entire face of the quilt.  All of it came from a freezer bag and I used all the fabric except a couple of strips of Raggedy Andy and Ann fabric.  Of course, I worried because it was crazy long. 

Well, the quilt ended up being meant for Clay.  He is 6.3 or 6.4.  At Christmas, he complained about short blankets.  The other day he came home.  He tested the newly finished quilt.  A perfect fit!  He took the quilt home to Belgrade.  I couldn’t be happier that it went to him.  Yay.  Now for my next quilt to finish.

I added Leo because he is so cute.

At the moment, I am working on twin quilts.  I am tying one and will start the other to tie soon.  I have another I am designing from scraps of strips of material.  I also have a wall hanging sitting out that I am contemplating.  Hopefully soon, I will be able to post those as finished.  Until then, I have to get back to work.