Donation quilt No. 3

 The third donation quilt is finished.  This one has proven the most challenging of the bunch, so far.

It is about 36 " square.  I say "about" as, although each square was planned and trimmed to 12" square, in the piecing I had to do a little more trimming on a couple of them.  I used a modified version the the Sharon Pedersen method of making a reversible quilt. In putting together this latest charity quilt, I made a couple of "rookie" mistakes, both of which required 1/2 hour or more of ripping before I could go about correcting them. I was annoyed with myself, and frustrated, even though the darn thing was finally finished. And the glass of wine my husband served me, when it was done, was most welcome.

This most recent quilt used quite a few of scraps, but left quite a few as well.

Most of these are longer strips of Kona Cotton, left over after I worked my way through Maria Shell's book on Patchwork.  I've added a few strips deliberately cut from good quilting cotton, so as to add some variety to the sold colour strips.  Many of the strips are less than the width of the fabric, some quite short, and they are a variety of widths, so coming up with ideas for using them is difficult.  And I paid too much for the fabric to use it for making dog beds to donate to the local Human Society shelter, even if I knew how to go about that.

So while I let that percolate in my brain, I'll start the prep work for a fourth quilt. This one will involve 4" squares, toped with a 2" square, which is appliqued on with a zig Zag stitch, through fabric, a batting square, and backing square. Then all of the small squares are stitched together with sides butted right up together, using a wider Zig Zag stitch in close to a satin stitch arrangement.  I like this as it uses up all of those small pieces of batting that are always left after putting together larger pieces.  It uses a bunch of small pieces of fabric, and a lot of leftover thread, as well.  And that will be my job to for today--after cleaning the kitchen, of course.