Drift Away {Finished Quilt}

Hip hip hooray -- an actual finish -- and one that I can cross off my embarrassingly long WIP list!

I started this quilt in June of last year and used Melissa Corry's Drift Away pattern. The intention was to cull some of my green, aqua, and blue scrap fabrics, many of which were leftover backing fabrics and medium-sized chunks of fabrics leftover from other quilts. This quilt did make a dent in my scraps and small cuts and as such, is full of favorite fabrics!

I had this quilt pantograph quilted in a simple loop-de-loop pattern, so that it stays a snuggly bed quilt. The quilting is done with black thread, which is extremely contrasting from the aqua dot backing, but black ultimately was the best choice for the front of the quilt.

I used the leftover backing fabric to bind this quilt by machine -- I only needed four binding strips since it was extra wide backing! I also had the perfect color of Aurifil to use for the top stitching too.

This quilt is earmarked as a gift for one of the many weddings that are tentatively on our calendar for later this year. That is, unless my husband decides we need to keep it. It *does* match our bedroom.

Quilt Stats:
Name: Scrappy Drift Away
Pattern: Drift Away by Melissa Corry, with borders added
Fabrics: Scraps for piecing, black Kona solid, and an older Cotton + Steel print for the border
Size: 90" square
Quilting: pantographed loops
Future: to be determined
Started: June 2018
Finished: April 2019

Sharing at Brag about your Beauties and Favorite Monthly Finish!

Drift Away {Bordered}

At the same time that I worked on my Breezy Blooms quilt, I added the black sashing strips to the top of my Drift Away quilt. The suggestion to add a skinny black sashing before adding a print border was given by quite a few of you and you were definitely right!

And then it sat, because I just wasn't sure what to use for the final border. I finally got the border fabric at the beginning of October. (Only, like, two months later. You can tell it's been a long time since I worked on this project because I was watching baseball in the photo above!)

The blue fabric on the right is what I picked up for the border, the other fabric is for my Double Delight quilt. When I did the math originally, I thought that I could squeak by with just a yard, but when it came time to make the decision at the cutting counter, I ended up getting a yard and a quarter.

And a good thing I did! Instead of cutting width of fabric strips, I decided that it would be better to cut length of fabric strips. With 45" long strips, I only needed two strips per side -- had I cut width of fabric strips, my two final sides would have been *just* too long and would have needed an additional seam and chunk of fabric. I am ALL about eliminating unnecessary seams, ladies and gents -- this is one of those occasions where it pays to take the extra time to do the math and plan ahead of time!

Here's the finished quilt top! My schedule and the weather has been uncooperative for outdoor pictures.

I am very happy I went with a more blue fabric to highlight the darker blues mixed into the quilt, which is mainly aquas.

(I'm also sort of happy that the leftover border fabric is the exact right shade for my planned color scheme for this year's Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, Good Fortune. That's a post for another day, though!)

My parents were in town visiting this weekend, so I decided to send this quilt, along with my now-completed Border Quilt top, back with them to be long arm quilted or quilted on my mom's mid-arm, if she feels so inclined. This quilt will end up with a teal dot extra wide backing and the Border quilt top will be backed with its tan-gold counterpart.

As a reminder, the pattern for Drift Away is by Melissa Corry of Happy Quilting. I followed her directions to make the 80" quilt and then added 1.5" black strips for the inner border and 4.5" blue strips for the outer border. My finished quilt will be 90" square which is a good queen sized bed quilt.

Happy Tuesday! Sharing at Linky Tuesday and Let's Bee Social!

Yesterday was also the first day of the semi-annual Tips and Tutorials Festival! Honey, Bunny, and Doll is one of the sponsors and I have also linked up three of my own tutorials:
Chit Chat Placemats
Easy Rail Fence Tablerunner
Fancy Flying Geese Units

Drift Away {Piecing Complete)

In between working on my Island Batik challenge for July, I've been plugging away at my Drift Away quilt and have been able to finish the top!

Or at least, finish the pieced part of the top. Much like my Double Delight quilt top, I'm not sure if I want to add a border onto this quilt or not. My original plan and my current inclination is to add a 5" border all the way around for a 90" square quilt since I'm thinking about giving this quilt as a wedding gift (that is, once the recipients actually get engaged -- it's only a matter of time!)

This project was supposed to be a leader and ender project, and I was having too much fun working on it to just leave it as a leader and ender project. The other complication (which I didn't necessarily anticipate) was that working on this quilt definitely required it to be laid out and planned out, which isn't very conducive to leader and ender projects most of the time. I also found that the big pieces of this quilt (the biggest size of squares is 8.5") took up a lot of valuable sewing station space!

I think it's a miracle that I was able to obtain such a random and well blended layout of all of my different fabrics! As I noted in some of my previous posts about this quilt, there are some fabrics with great memories attached to them included in this quilt. Even if this is a quilt that doesn't live me forever, it's been a good change to work on a scrappy project with bigger piecing.

I need over a yard of fabric for borders on this quilt so I haven't found anything in my stash. So at this point, I can either call it finished or start looking for a border fabric -- what do you think? Should I keep this 80 inches square or add borders so that it will be closer to 90 inches square?

Happy Wednesday! Sharing at Let's Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday and Oh Scrap! Don't forget to take advantage of our free shipping special in the HBD Etsy Shop!

Drift Away {Half of a Quilt}

As I mentioned in my previous post about this quilt, working on putting together a quilt that is set on point sometimes yields some goofy quilt pictures! I am almost at the halfway point where the quilt is a single gigantic triangle.

Since I don't have a design wall, I typically use my carpets as my "design spaces". And since I have been working on this quilt on and off over the last month or so, I have been laying down the finished corner, laying out a row or two, sewing those rows together and then to the quilt top, and then strategically folding everything up.

The row that I've been working on is the middle row of the quilt. It's ready to be added to the quilt (after a good press!).

Happy Friday! I have a giveaway for Island Batik scraps going until Monday and we have a pattern sale in our Etsy shop!

Sharing at Oh Scrap!

Drift Away {In Scraps}

It's hard to deny -- I love scrap quilts! Over the last few years, I've made quite a few quilts that were made entirely (or nearly entirely) from fabric from my stash (like Pinwheel Plus, Sunset Gathering, Summer Solstice, Meadow, and my two Blue in Bloom quilts, to name a few!)

I'm now in a place where my fabric yardage and bundles are dwindling, and I have scads and scads of fabric that fall into the scraps-to-large-scraps category. Now that my Top Spin and On Ringo Lake quilts are finished, and my Double Delight and Donuts projects are ready to be put together into finished tops (with the help of a trip to the store!), it's time to embark on a new scrappy project.

Somewhat by serendipity, Melissa of Happy Quilting released her Drift Away pattern and I knew it was perfect for my green, teal, and blue fabrics that didn't get used in my Donuts quilt. Rather than use fat quarters, I used a variety of sizes of scraps, many of which were leftover chunks from backings, to cut the squares needed for this project. I also decided on using black for the background since I had a large chunk of it on hand.

In this picture, the smallest size squares are already sewn into pairs, but I can still pick out lots of recognizable fabrics from older projects! The plaid on the left was the backing for Racing Rails, the teal dot was the backing for Sunset Gathering, the olive and aqua leaf is from my Midnight mystery quilt, and the squiggle is from Beau's Ties.

One of the reasons I decided to go with black instead of a light solid is because the fabrics I used have both whites and off-whites in the prints.

I managed to get a significant part of the first corner together rather quickly! I didn't lay out the entire quilt at once so I just started randomly pulling the medium and large sized focus squares from their piles. I have two different fabrics for the large setting triangles, so I am alternating them.

So far I think my "place-the-squares-as-you-go" plan is going quite well. I only had to take out one or two seams where I sewed units upside down. Only a few rows to go until I'm halfway done with the quilt top! This quilt as designed ends up at 80" square -- I'm strongly considering adding a border on all four sides so that it would end up full/queen sized since I may give this as a gift. But those are things to decide another day!

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday!