Sunday, February 27, 2011

Ohio Star Scrappy for Quilts of Valor 2011

Last week was my SPRING (are you kidding me we got 14 inches of snow last Sunday) quilting retreat.  I have done this now for the last 4 or 5 years to get away for a couple of days earlier in the year and to get something of a jump start on this year's projects.  This year I am trying to focus on using the leftover fabric from quilts I have made in the past to make at least 2 donation quilts.  I now understand that when you do a scrappy quilt from your stash, you have to think a lot more about how you are going to use the fabric and how many pieces you can get out of those odd shaped scraps.


I decided to start with a group of traditional based fabrics from 3 different projects: the Lone Star Maniac I made last year for my brother-in-law; the Thank You quilt made for the neighbors who have watched our pets; and Brian's Lone Star in Ohio from a couple of years ago.  While the fabrics have a similar feel to them, each box of scraps brought a different set of fabrics.  It was great to go through the boxes and realize that I actually have enough of these fabrics to make 2 quilts.


From Brian's quilt I found that there were about 20 leftover 6" blocks that I could use as a starting point.  I cut all the pieces I would need to make a total of 50 Ohio Stars and 49 Quarter Square Triangle blocks.  I worked on the Ohio Stars at the retreat.  I had to finish the Qtr Sq blocks at home on Sun since we all cleared out early to beat the blizzard.  This is what I had completed by the time I got home Sunday morning:

I had the blocks complete by Sunday night and the whole top assembled by last night.  I have decided to use it for my demo quilt in the Machine Quilting class that starts on Monday night.  I will post some followup comments about how that goes.