New Year, New Opportunities!

"Time waits for no one, but fabric stash hangs around a little longer...."

                                                                  anonymous

Happy New Year! I love January for the simple reason that I find it is the absolute best month to dive into some fun scrap sewing with no deadlines, no agenda, just good cleaning fun! There is actually some method to my madness. It's a great time to dig into my scrap bins and re-sort, clean out, make new discoveries and just have some fun in my sewing room after the craziness of the holidays.

With storage and organization in mind, I'm sharing this post again - not so coincidentally, from January 2014! - in case you are looking for some fun new storage ideas for your sewing space. I jazzed up some old hat boxes with selvages for a simple storage solution. And also because it's very timely...

You can listen here

Save the date! I'll be a guest on American Patchwork & Quilting Radio hosted by Pat Sloan - LIVE on Monday, January 11th!

Live Show time is

4pm - 5pm Eastern

3pm - 4pm Central

2pm - 3pm Mountain

1pm - 2pm Pacific

I'm excited but a little daunted by the live part...can't there be some lag time for editing in case I blow it?! No such luck. If you miss the live airing, it will linger on in the archives for posterity....forever!

Pat's topic for January and February is BIG IDEA: Solving storage and workspace woes! Every journey begins with a single step. We'll be talking all things Stash Lab, scrap quilts and anything else she throws at me. You can also enjoy all of Pat's past shows at creativetalknetwork.com/ available to download any time. They are great listening, especially while the scraps are flying under your presser foot. Hope you can join us.

Happy stash quilting,
Tonya

Stamp of Approval

Sharing a new quilt - what a great way to start the new year! I can't believe we're almost in February already! This is "Stamp of Approval" and it will be featured in the April 2014 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. It's my take on a postage stamp quilt - well, half-ways anyway!

“Used with permission from American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine. ©2014 Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved.”

I love antique postage stamp quilts but find the million-plus little one inch squares a little daunting. Our quilting predecessors were champions of using every last scrap, right down to the little one inch squares that would be scrimped, saved and stitched together. A postage stamp quilt was a badge of honor reflecting its maker's frugality and resourcefulness during hard times and could take many, many years to make.

Mine, not so much. I came up with the center blocks that are inversions of each other so I would only have to make half as many! I also used strip-set piecing to make them go together a lot quicker. Lazy, maybe, but I do like the result. Originally, I only had planned to make the center but once I got that far I felt like it just needed a little somethin'-somethin' so that's where the leaf and vine border came in. It framed whole project and gave just enough curve and flow to an otherwise very linear grid design.

“Used with permission from American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine. ©2014 Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved.”

Just about any project that will eat up some of my scraps is sure to be one of my favorites and this one was no exception. After falling for the aqua blue in a previous project, I was bound and determined to use it again, this time in a big dose. I pulled out all of my 1 1/2" scrap strips (the smallest size I usually keep) and then filtered them down to just the ones that looked like colors you would find in an Easter basket. To up the scrap-factor in my quilts, I usually expand my search to a color category instead of a single color and I am usually pretty pleased with what the additional scraps bring to the party.

The finished quilt measures 63"x 63" and the lovely quilting was done by my friend and wonderful, long-arm quilter Tracey. Thanks also go to my quilting buddy Yvonne, who gave me the idea for stitching down the yo-yo "berries" in the border using decorative embroidery stitches on my machine. There is a nice detail shot and also a quilt diagram in the magazine spread.

I have been told that this issue hits the newsstands and goes out to subscribers the first week in February. So while "Stamp of Approval" is not a cover girl, she's still one of my favorites! Hope you enjoy it too!

“Used with permission from American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine. ©2014 Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved.”

Happy stitching,

Tonya