More Shirts progress ...

The shirts are now a completed quilt top! I want the fabrics on this quilt to be 100% recycled shirts, so I need to organise the shirt backs into a backing next :)

Shirts Progress ...

All that organising and cutting of shirts is starting to pay off - my design wall has gone from this ...
















... to this. There is only just enough room to get the centre of the quilt on the design wall, but I wanted to make sure I had a nice spread of the different fabrics. Now to sew the top together :)

A friendship Star ...

I am a member of the Stashbuster Yahoo group and have been for a number of years. Another member is an amazing lady called Gladys who makes hundreds of charity quilts every year for her local community. Lots of these quilts started life as blocks or quilt tops that other membesr of Stashbusters no longer wanted and Gladys takes them in and combines them to make wonderful 'quilty hugs'. In recognition, group members have been asked to make a scrappy star block for Gladys so she can make herself a quilt from all her internet friends. This is my contribution :)

Shirts ...

I'm a big fan of Bonnie Hunter's and have been collecting men's shirts from charity/thrift shops for a while. I've made a couple of quilts in the past using them, but now I have plans for another one. First, I needed to get those shirts organised, so I've spent a few days going through them all, cutting off a sleeve or front from each to turn into strips and cutting the back out of each to keep for larger shapes or to make pieced backings. Long, tedious work but, I've turned this ...

... into this. All pieces are now cut ready for my Smokey Mountain Stars lap quilt with strips left over for another project in the future :)

First quilt of 2011 done!

Here it is finished. I did something different with the quilting on this one because it is going to be a demo to my Quilt Guild. Personally, I prefer free-motion quilting. I don't get on very well with straight line quilting and rarely do it. However, I know a lot of people don't get on with free-motion quilting, so I wanted to see what I could create with the walking foot.

This is the result - alternating wavy lines of open zig-zag and straight stitch. I saw the large zig-zag used on someone's blog - a modern interpretation of quilting - but cannot find the link again. I used a varigated gold tone thread which has the added advantage of toning down the brightness of the ivory tone-on-tone fabric I used. What do you think?

First top of 2011 ...

We're only two and a half days into the new year and already I've got another quilt top done! This is another Disappearing Nine Patch (DNP) done in a more child-friendly colour scheme than the floral one from before xmas. It used up a metre of a Debbie Mumm print that has been hanging around for ages, but it's not officially part of my stash busting challenge.



Fabrics were cut on the evening of New Years Day, so this shows how quickly it goes together. Which is a good thing because I have been asked to demo the DNP pattern at a Quiltathon my Guild is holding in the spring. I wanted another example to be able to show how different the pattern looks with different fabric choices :)