UFO Sampler Blocks

In my ongoing attempt to work through some of my old unfinished projects this year, I have been going through a box of leftover blocks each month, pulling out anything that matches the color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Our color for January was pink, and for February it was blue. I discovered a very old group of pink/peach and blue blocks, probably made in my first year or two as a quilter, which would date them to the mid-1990's. Here's one of my favorite blocks from the group.

The old pink and blue blocks I'd pulled out appeared to be my early attempt at a sampler quilt. I'd guess that I was working my way through a series of block patterns from a quilting book I took out of the library, my favorite source for quilting information back then. My first attempt to use them now was to put them together into a baby quilt, adding a greyish-blue striped fabric for sashing and border.

That combination just wasn't working for me, so I decided to use each block separately to make placemats. I pulled an assortment of other fabrics to frame and border the blocks, and I even had a couple of those same old fabrics from the 90's still in my stash. The finished size of each placemat is around 12-13" high x 18" wide.

The blocks in the last two placemats were made much later than the sampler blocks. I don't know when the pink star block was made, but the little blue blocks were extras from the recent Project Quilting Challenge: Common Blocks.

Altogether, that's a total of eleven more placemats added to the pile that will be donated to Meals on Wheels through our quilt guild. My goal for the year is to average one placemat each week, and I'm already up to 19 as we near the end of February.

I was looking through some old quilt photos (print photos, not digital) and found a couple pictures of a wallhanging that includes many of the same fabrics. The date on that photo indicated that it was made in 1995-'96. I shared this same photo in a 2015 Throwback Thursday post. I would think that the sampler blocks were made around the same time.

Linking up with:

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Brag About Your Beauties at From Bolt to Beauty

Rainbow Scrap Challenge at So Scrappy

Oh Scrap! at Quilting is more fun than Housework

Happy quilting!

Julie in GA

Heart Quilt Finished!

Just in time for Valentine's Day, my Storm at Sea Heart quilt is finished! I know that the color for February at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is pink, and my quilt is mostly red with just a few pieces of pink included, but it seemed like the perfect time to share it.

Storm at Sea Heart, 30" x 27"

This project was one of the oldest UFOs in my sewing room. The heart at the center was pieced in 2001, based on design ideas from Doreen Speckmann's book Pattern Play. I've been fascinated for many years by the appearance of curves possible with the Storm at Sea pattern. In January of 2022, I added the borders. It took another year before I did the quilting, but now it is finally finished and ready to be displayed!

This is the fabric I used for the back. There's no info along the selvage, but I believe I purchased it around the time the quilt top was made.

One thing I have learned as I've done more free-motion quilting in recent months is how helpful it can be to have some contrast in the thread color. Yes, the quilting is more visible, making any irregularities more obvious. However, that improved visibility means I can see my stitching more easily and keep track of where I'm going/where I've been. Instead of using red thread to quilt the heart and the outer border, I quilted those areas with a hot pink thread. The heart is quilted with echoed hearts that flow in every direction.

The quilting in the border is mirrored double scallops with hearts in between, also stitched in the same hot pink thread.

The background is quilted with a lighter pink thread in a meandering hearts design.

This is my first UFO finish of the year, and I hope to have many more! I've been starting an awful lot of new projects lately and need to include more of the UFOs on my to-do list too.

Be sure to check out all of the wonderful scrappy projects at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge every Saturday,and at Oh Scrap! over at Quilting is more fun than Housework on Sunday.

Happy quilting everyone and Happy Valentine's Day!

Julie in GA