A byproduct of trying to make more room in my sewing room

Since I brought all the selvedges into my sewing room and put them all together, I have less space than ever to work, so I am looking around on the floor for things I can make just go away.

I had a medium tote bag of these strips rolls that Ewa has made - and while most of them are in the room at the church until I am psyched up to use them, I decided to just go ahead and “use these up” with some of the black woolens or menswear that I had from my Big Fabric Haul 2017 version.

So I decided that while I have other things I’ve been itching to get to, I’ve also been longing to get my sewing room in better shape - maybe more than anything else - so I went ahead and spent a couple of days and made up these tops. These are 12 more charity tops - all the same style. I did use three different black fabrics.

So, here they are - and I will store these at the church until I am ready to use them.

The way I did these was to cut a length of fabric - 86” of the black strips. Then I sewed the strips on a black piece after pressing them as they come to me unpressed. I did that multiple times so I had a black/strips combo. Then I sewed two of those together so I had four rows together, etc. When combining, I found clipping to be much faster than pinning when combining the strips to the next black piece. I continued that so there were 5 black and 6 strips rows.

This uses up these strips in the quickest way possible. These are Ewa’s way to use up all the extra odds and ends of fabrics she has found or been given.

I couldn’t think of any faster way to use them up in at least a medium pleasing way. At least people do have something to look at when they look at their quilts. I’m not totally thrilled with the quilts, but once again, they work - and even in our give-away you will see a couple of them sitting on chairs, waiting to be chosen. I showed you with big yellow arrows.

While working on these, however, it did remind me to go ahead and cut up some of these blacks and ask if Ewa’s mom could make some alternate blocks ones with some of my black and white prints. Could be fun, indeed. I was so “over” the idea of the big squares by using the brown or tan and white ones, that I did take a break from them for a while. Quite a while, in fact.

I was able to give out all the rest of my brown and/or tan ones from that Big Fabric Haul this year - and it is time to restock.

I’m showing the photos from this year’s browns/tans that I gave away this year.

I worked so hard on these yesterday and had so much Adrenalin running through my veins that I had a hard time settling down and going to sleep last night. It was crazy! But I felt so good in getting those 12 tops finished (single size) and am ready to take them to the church building. I have such a mess up there in that room that my goal will be to work on that a bit every week until I can get it organized and much better! I have some green heavy duty totes I can start to fill up once again with tops the correct size.

While I can’t say that I’m in love with this style of quilt - they are warm! They really are.

All that heavier fabric makes for a heavier quilt and it is significantly warmer than a regular all cotton quilt when finished.

And, since I will wash the quilt first after being quilted, I can have assurance that all will be just fine for the new owner!

Thank you so much for coming along with me on this journey.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Becky PetersenComment