I finished the binding on this quilt last night and immediately threw it in the wash to let it get nice and soft and crinkly (to be honest, I also wanted a toasty, fresh out of the dryer quilt to lay under while watching Thursday night tv!)

I love the modern, simple look of this one. It uses tons of white, with little strips of colored fabrics. I used up more scraps to make this one, so the size of the strips varied based on what size scraps I had available. I wanted randomly placed strips of color, and I think it turned out just as I had imagined it.

For the back, I pieced together one long strip of scraps, and placed it vertically off-center.

It’s bound with polka dotted fabric (of course!). I like this darker purple Anna Maria Horner fabric with raspberry colored dots.I love a dark binding, especially on a quilt with a lot of white.

This quilt is the largest I’ve made (the largest I’ve actually finished, that is!), measuring about 55″ x 70″.

If you haven’t already, be sure to enter my 100 post giveaway. I’ll be selecting a winner on Sunday. I love all your crafty gift ideas — and of course if you need some ideas, be sure to take a glance at the comments. How can you not be inspired by all that craftiness!

Thanks for all the comments on my giveaway post! It sounds like there are some great homemade/handmade gifts in the works for this year. I don’t think anyone mentioned napkins, so I thought I’d provide you with another gift idea. These napkins make great gifts, or are also perfect as hostess gifts, or work quite well to add some color to your table! (Plus, you can make them with two different fabrics, so they can be reversible - two napkins in one!)

I fully intended to write up this tutorial months ago, but apparently time got away from me. I was reminded of it yesterday by a fellow blogger and I thought this might be a perfect time to share it.

I like square napkins, but you could certainly cut your fabric any size or shape you’d like. For this napkin, I selected two Heather Bailey fabrics - the lovely Pop Daisy in red and the complimentary red Zig Zag. I cut each to 13 1/2″ square. I use this size so that I can cut three out of the width of your standard 42/44″ wide fabric. (I pre-wash my fabric when making napkins)

I selected red rick rack for the trim. I’m partial to the vintage cotton rick rack if you can find it, but any would work here. If you are using vintage cotton, you may want to pre-wash the rick rack.

The rick rack will be sewn to the right side of one of the fabric squares (I usually sew it to the fabric that will be the top). This next photo shows how you’ll turn the rick rack at the corners

I’m lazy, so I don’t bother pinning it, but if you’d like, you could pin the rick rack in place along the edge. I trim a bit off the end of the rick rack so I have a clean edge. You’ll want to make sure that you start with the cut edge facing the outer edge of your fabric, as seen below. This way the cut edge will end up hidden when it’s sewn together. I start in the middle of one edge of the fabric and sew a straight line down the middle of the rick rack. I position it so that the outer bumps of the rick rack are lined up with the edge of the fabric.

When you reach a corner, leave the needle in the down position and turn. You’ll turn the rick rack as well so that it lines up with the next edge.

Overlap the rick rack where you started and backstitch to secure.

When completed, it will look like this

Next you’ll put the second square on top of this one, right sides together

You sew around the perimeter again, leaving an opening about 4″ long so you can turn it right side out. I try to sew along the same line I just made when attaching the rick rack. (As an alternative, if you want to skip a step, you could certainly skip sewing the rick rack to the front, and simply pin it securely and sew everything together in this step. I like to do it separately to make sure the rick rack is attached correctly.)

Clip the corners, turn right side out, and iron the edges flat. You may need to pull on some of the rick rack points as you iron - this can help to make sure you get a clean edge. Make sure to iron in the unsewn section - this opening will be sewn shut in the next step.

This is the last step! Simply topstitch around the entire napkin. This closes that opening and provides a nice finished look.  You can even be creative here - I used a straight stitch, but you could use a zig zag, or any other decorative stitch you may have on your machine.

And here you have your lovely completed napkin! It can be folded any way you’d like - I like it as a square, with two sides of rick rack showing, or folded in thirds, with rick rack showing along the bottom edge.

And don’t forget, it’s reversible! (though I should mention that I often make these using one printed fabric for the top and then a solid white for the backing. Both are quite lovely!) Enjoy!

So, I made it to 100 posts… er, actually 101, but who’s counting?! When I first started this blog back in June, I never though I’d make it a month, let alone nearly 6 months! Thank you to everyone who’s visited, commented, provided suggestions & inspiration, and taught me new techniques. I truly enjoy hearing from everyone!

Now on to the giveaway… I put together a package for one lucky winner. You’ll receive two handmade potholders (my two favorites, in orange and green)

As well as a set of handmade napkins… I haven’t made these in a while, but if you look way back in my posts (like here), you’ll see that I was really obsessed with napkins and especially vintage cotton rick rack. This is a set of 6, made out of two coordinating pink Jennifer Paganelli fabrics with some nice gray cotton rick rack.

I’ve also included two reusable produce bags. I posted about these here. I use my set all the time for veggies, but when I sent some to a friend of mine, she said they were too nice for produce and decided to store her jewelry in them instead. So I guess it’s up to you what you end up doing with them…

And lastly, simply because I love fabric scraps, you’ll win the fabrics seen below (the 2nd photo shows the same fabrics, just stacked instead). These are smallish pieces, but would be good to incorporate into a variety of scrap projects (like those potholders or towels) or even to include in a scrap quilt.

Now for the rules - simply leave a comment telling me what kind of handmade gifts you’ll be making for the holidays (or handmade gifts you’d like to receive!) What do you think is a great handmade gift idea? (even if it’s not something you’re actually going to make!)

Want a few extra entries? Post about this giveaway on your own blog and you’ll get 5 extra entries. Please just provide a link to your posting when you leave your comment.

This contest is open to everyone (yes, even my family members!) I’ll pick a winner on Sunday and will post the winner on Monday.

I’m working my way through my bag of scraps, though this may be the last one for a while - I’m getting a little tired of these same fabrics! I guess I need to start some other projects in order to create some new scraps…

This quilt is very simple - I had in mind a white quilt with little bits of color. To create it, I pieced together scraps of similar sizes, creating strips of varying lengths. I incorporated these strips randomly in with my white fabric.

I’m liking this simple look, and I think that I may make this quilt again, perhaps next time selecting particular fabrics. It would be a good way to highlight your favorites, without using up too much of your stash!

Speaking of, that’s what I’ll be working on tonight… cleaning up my craft room, and the enormous mess which is my fabric stash. (I’m embarrassed to be showing you this, though maybe seeing it online will force me to get it cleaned up!)

It might be time to throw this away, don’t you think?! (well, unless someone can come up with a good project for super small scraps!)

This project was really quite quick, but might also make a great gift, especially if paired with those potholders from the other day!

I’ve been trying to use up some of my small scraps, since it’s been getting a little out of hand! Like many others, I have a hard time throwing away fabric, even the smallest scraps, and as a result, I have a huge container filled with some pretty small scraps. For this project I pulled out scraps that were about 3″-4″ long with varying widths.

I wanted to add some color to these plain white dishtowels. These are Martha Stewart flour sack towels, which I bought at Kmart some time ago. I love them as towels, but frankly, they’re a little boring as is… a bit of color is just what they needed!

To make these I sewed the scraps I had selected into a long strip, long enough to cover the width of the towel, with about an inch overhang on either end.

I decided I wanted a strip about 3″ wide, so I marked a straight line on the top and bottom edges and folded and ironed along those lines to create a nice straight, clean strip.

I then pinned this strip to the towel. I decided to sew it about 4″ from the bottom edge of the towel. I used a zig zag stitch to sew down the length of the strips. To ensure that it stayed in place during washing, I also stitched in the ditch every couple of blocks.

And now you have some fun towels - just enough to add a little color to your kitchen!

but unfortunately, not big enough. It seems like I’ve been working on this quilt for quite some time now, and it seems as though I’ve cut about a million rectangles, but it still turns out that it’s not queen sized! How is that possible?!

Ok, I haven’t really been working on this forever, since for the majority of the time the pieces have been left laying on our guest bed (it’s a good thing we don’t have guests too often!) and I haven’t really cut a million rectangles either… that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

It’s interesting to look at this quilt top though, as it was started when I was still really really new to quilting. In fact, I was trying to cut rectangles using a paper pattern, rather than a ruler and rotary cutter - what was I thinking?! The result is that the rectangles aren’t all quite the same size, and consequently what should have lined up does not. It’s ok though, as it just shows how much I’ve learned!

But back to the current size of it. I’ve cut the white sashing and sewn the top together. It currently covers our queen sized guest bed, but there’s definitely no overhang. I’m reluctant to cut additional pieces to make it large enough (basically because I’m lazy and I’d rather be working on something else!) but since it’s so close I think I’d be silly not to complete it correctly.

I guess that’s what I’ll be working on this weekend. Currently there are no repeating fabrics, so I’m going to have to work to find enough additional fabrics to finish this one!

Not a quilt this time, but quilty nonetheless!

We’ve been using some very old potholders for a long time now. In reality, they were never meant to be potholders. They were actually used as examples of quilts you could order from a local store. While they did have batting between two pieces of fabric, they really weren’t very useful as potholders - thin batting led to hot hands when pulling something out of the oven!

In any case, I’m not sure why it took me so long to make new ones. For these I continued with the rainbow hues and pulled several fabrics of one color for each potholder. I made quick log cabin blocks for each front, a piece of corresponding fabric for the backing and whatever leftover fabric for binding.

This was a good project for using up fabric scraps, and also a great way to use up my leftover batting. Each time I make a quilt I’m left with strips of batting - not large enough for another quilt, but large enough that I don’t feel I can throw it away. I used two layers of batting for each potholder and did some simple straight quilting on each.

And I’m pleased to report… no burnt hands!

Thank you all for the name suggestions for this latest quilt. They were all quite creative, and much better than anything I came up with! I think Windmill Whimsy is quite fitting, so many thanks go out to Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio.

The back of this quilt is mainly white again, but I sewed together one more of the colored blocks. I didn’t have enough fabrics with a purple hue to do a purple block on the front, so instead I used one purple fabric to create a block for the back.

And here’s the completed front and back:

I opted for dark gray for the binding. I think it goes nicely with all the colors on the front, as well as with the white and purple on the back.

This quilt measures about 43″ x 58″, which works as a good size for a throw for the couch. Without trying, this seems to be the size of each quilt I make… soon I’m going to have to break out of this trend and try something bigger! (it turns out that you can indeed have too many quilts for one couch!)

…albeit slowly. I pulled out this block quilt that I started ages ago. The top is already complete, so I got to work on the quilt back.

I’m going for a simple back for this one - predominately white, with one strip of the colored blocks down one side. The blocks on the front are 8″ square, so for the back I made similar blocks, but cut them to 4″ square.

I remember now why I put this quilt away without finishing it - it’s big! This is actually the first quilt I started, and without thinking I just jumped right into a queen sized quilt. Once I realized I was being a bit ambitious, I put this one away and started making quilts of a more manageable size. I still really like this one though, and would love to see it on our bed, so I’m going to go for it. Wish me luck!

So, is this what you were expecting? Probably not… It’s actually not what I was expecting when I first started this quilt. I knew that I wanted to work with triangles again, but I wasn’t sure of the pattern. This resulted due to Morgan’s help. We were creating different patterns with the triangles and he was actually showing me what not to do… which ended up being just what I did. Go figure.

At first, the colors were going to be randomly matched, but then I realized that I did have enough fabrics to match them with others of the same hue. (It’s funny, because I would never have set out to make a quilt with all the colors of the rainbow, but I do actually like the result.)

I don’t have a name for this one, and I’m open to suggestions. Clearly you’ve seen that my choices for past quilts have been lacking. Maybe this pattern already has a name and I could just call it that - does anyone know?

I haven’t yet decided what that back will look like, but I think I’ll be using my favorite Flea Market Fancy print in either pink or gold for the binding. My local quilting shop is out of spray adhesive, so this may have to be put aside for a bit (I know, there are other places to buy it, but I’m really partial to this one brand!)

Next up… I’m thinking I might just finish up one of the quilts I started and never finished… like this one, or maybe this one…