Scrappy Hourglass Tutorial

The hourglass is a fun block that is pretty simple to make, and it looks fabulous. It can be used on it's own or as an alternate block. It works great as an alternate block with both simle and complicated blocks.

In this tutorial, I show how to make this hourglass block, and I use it as an alternate block with just a plain square. The finished size of this block is 6", but I explain how to make this same quilt with any size block. It's easy. It is also easy to vary the size of the quilt by increasing or decreasing the number of blocks in the quilt.

Here is a link to the tutorial:

If you make an hourglass quilt, I would love for you to post your pictures on my flickr group that I just set up.

P.S. It really bugs me that the quilt isn't quilted. My quilt machine is broken. (Ughh!) I will take a new picture when the quilt is quilted and bound and washed.

This tutorial was inspired by SewMamaSew's Scrap Buster contest because, "When life gives you scraps, make quilts!"

And now. . . . off to make more quilts!

A Scrap Quilt for Margaret's Hope Chest

I recently read about an organization, Margaret's Hope Chest, that has a goal to provide 400 quilts for homeless children in Michigan.



Here is a link to their blog and the information about this specific project. Their deadline is Nov 15th. They call this project Hope Squared because they are suggesting you just sew squares together because that makes a fast and easy quilt. They will take other patterns and they will finish it for you! Being a long arm quilter, I despise the thought of just sending a top, but my machine is out of order so I will just be sending a top (and backing and binding and batting if it fits in my box).

I am continually amazed at what a giving group of people that quilter's are. Helping children really brings out the best in us.

I had some leftover material from my bulls eye quilt "Kaffe Fassett Meets the 30s" (see previous post) so I sewed them together with a few skinny white strips for fun and ended up with this cheery quilt.

While it is very simple, I really like it.

I am hoping to get another quilt made, but I still have that baby coming (hopefully soon) that may not let me get to it.

Scrap Quilts for Dolls

What to do with fabric strips 5" long of mostly, but perhaps not exactly, the same width? Make a scrap quilt!

I had a four year old home for a week while her three older siblings were at Grandpa and Grandma's house. She liked these scraps so we made them into a doll quilt for her. Had just enough to make a little pocket. Four year olds can't stand to have one of their favorites not included. As you can see, it isn't just for dolls. It is also for bears or puppies or ponies.


Because of it's size, I actually made a second attempt at hand quilting. This time I tried outlining each block. Except that got boring so on one of the rectangles, I followed the dots diagonally and on another one I followed the swirls of the flowers.

I tell you, that is enough hand quilting for me for a while. Binding is enough to fill my quota of hand work for a while. I think it will grow on me, but now school has started and soccer, gymnastics, etc so busy off and running instead of sitting and fiddling.

Scrap Quilts for Charity

What to do with leftover strips 9" long of various widths? Make a couple charity quilts of course!

Here is what I came up with:


I used the strips between 9" squares, rotated every other row since they weren't going to line up anyway and trimmed the rows to the same length. The striped fabric separating the rows was the binding for the quilt the leftovers were from that I decided not to use.

These quilts are going to one of my aunts who is made 5 quilts for a silent auction to raise money for two of her grandson's football team. Her quilts were all bed size so I told her I would send her some smaller quilts to add to her silent auction. The school colors are blue and gold.

My sister said she wanted to make a quilt for them as well so we got together yesterday and each made a row quilt. These are quick quilts to make that get quilted as you sew them together so you don't need to send it off to the long arm quilter. We made these two in about three hours which included checking on kids, making lunch for kids, etc. That includes the binding.

If you are interested in making a similar quilt, check out the tutorial link.