Back with a vengance....and a great tutorial!

Hello SassyFans!

I am so thrilled to be back and blogging here on our SassyBlog - it has been a long hiatus! In fact, I imagine most of you don't even know me. I am the other half of the SassyPacks team - the daughter, the beginning quilter, the one who spends nearly all her time in our quilt studio saying "that seems too hard."  :)

I haven't been blogging here for the past year or so as I have been on sort of a personal journey - and a literal one, I suppose! I recently had the privilege of spending about 8 months living in Nicaragua, helping to open a clinic for women and children. While I got to take a little quilting with me, I just didn't have much time to blog here, so I am thrilled to be back in the US, where I can quilt and design and blog at will.

When I left for Nicaragua (if you want to see what I was up to, check out Clinica Verde), I basically ditched my old life - sold nearly everything and made a clean break.  Now that I am back, I am resettling into a more familiar life, and once again setting up a living space.  When I was pitching the remnants of my old life, the first - and I do mean FIRST - things to go were the cluttery things....knick-knacks, decorative items, candles, dust collectors, all of them.  Turns out, now that I am back, I am left with a home full of functional furniture and zero personality.  Thus springs the inspiration for today's tutorial - using your beautiful fabrics as wall hangings.

Scrappy Fall Colors - A Wall Hanging

This month's scrappy project started out as a lap quilt, but I liked the look so much I thought it would make a better wall hanging.

It's a bit of a departure from our usual quick scrappy projects. Although it's an easy pattern, there are quite a few smaller pieces and an accurate 1/4" seam allowance is important.

A Scrap Quickie!

I'm little embarrassed to admit that I've never made a disappearing 9-patch quilt before. To be honest, the block never really appealed much to me. But I made a small D9P for our July scrap-busting project and I have to say, it was a fun, fun quilt to make! I'm now a big fan of this block.

This 39-1/2" X 39-1/2" kid sized quilt was super fast to put together. You could make it this size for a quick shower gift or a great table topper, or add more blocks and make a lap or bed quilt. The blocks finish at 13" and we used only 9 blocks for this one.

Scrappy Project 1 - Finish

For part one of this quick scrappy baby quilt, see yesterday's post.

All of our purple and yellow blocks are pieced and pressed! The green ones go together even faster. For each block, use:
(2) 2-1/2" X 5" green rectangles,
(1) 2-1/2" X 5" yellow rectangle,
(1) 2-1/2" X 2-1/2" green square, and
(2) 2-1/2" X 2-1/2" yellow squares.

Lay them out as shown in the picture below:

Stash Busting Project #1

Lately, I've really felt that it would be a good idea to use up some stash. Like most quilters, I sometimes feel like my personal stash is just a little bigger than it should be. And now the store's building up it's own stash.

Please join me in any or all of these projects and share your stash busting ideas with us! This first project is a semi-unplanned quilt. I'm going to make some blocks to get it started and then decide on size and border(s) later. I do know that I want it to be a baby size quilt. I don't have a big stash of 1/2 or 1 yard pieces, nor do I have fat quarter bundles of entire lines. Mine are mostly odd size cuts and little chunks of fabrics.

I also know I want to use purples and greens. And I'll set them in white soft yellow. I'm going to make pinwheels - they make such cute baby quilts. Pinwheels and 9-patches; I really like 2-block quilts.