Christmas Doll Quilts

When I recently made two Charity Christmas quilts and a dog Christmas quilt, I had some left over strips and several orphan blocks. I decided they would make great doll Christmas quilts. Two of the quilts are for typical doll beds, the two smaller ones are for a doll bunk bed.

They were fun to make and fun to quilt. (I quilted all of them waiting for the plumber to come one day to do a winter tune up on my furnace. Seemed appropriate)!

Here they are hanging on the line together!

Doll Christmas quilts on the clothes line

The backs are fun too. I especially like the forest fairy fabric—a scrap a friend gave me!

These quilts are a totally satisfactory use of fabric straps and orphan blocks!

Orphan Block Improv Quilt

This is my final finish for 2016!  And it's a good quilt to end the year!

This quilt was made from orphan blocks, left over bits from other quilts, sample blocks, blocks from my posts on color studies and some left over strips and bits of fabric.

There is no reason this assortment of bit and pieces who work well but they do!  I love all the bright colors and the the organized chaos in this quilt! And the fact that there is nothing precious about it! The dogs are welcome to sleep on it and I can roll it up and use it for a picnic blanket!

But most of all I love it because I have a reminder of quilts I've made!

It's just about twin size.  I quilted it with a walking foot on my domestic machine. I let each block suggest the quilting: straight lines, echoing, Bernina's #4 wave, and even a little free form wave crossing a straight line. Free motion quilting would have been faster, but following the patterns in the each block was more fun!

See if you can match some of the orphan blocks with the quilts in the gallery below! (Note: There are orphan blocks without photos matching quilts). Have fun!
 HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Orphan Blocks and a Few Fabric Strings Make a Quilt Top

I've been putting orphan blocks in a plastic bin for the past several years.  Some of the blocks are one time trial blocks or color studies, some are a few extra blocks from a project, some are from downsizing a quilt and there is a least one section of strip piecing I never cut into blocks!

All together they are bright, vibrant and create interesting activity in the quilt top.

It's still very much a work in progress. There are hundreds of loose threads that need to be clipped. These blocks that have been sitting around are messy!  And I'm trying to decide if I want to put a border on it to make it a better twin size quilt. I'm still not sure what I want the final quilt to look like!