Two Scrap Quilts

A few months ago I decided to use up some of my wonderful batik scraps.  Batik fabrics are made of tightly woven cotton dyed in a way which results in the design being on both sides of the cloth, so there is no right or wrong side of the fabric.  The tend to be richly colored and often have striking designs.  Most quilters love batiks so much that they hang onto every last scrap.  I certainly do and my drawer of them was overflowing.  It was fun to poke through them and become reacquainted; I've had some of these fabrics for over twenty years!   

I randomly cut some bigger pieces into little pieces and then sewed up a couple of rows. ( I kind of like the jagged edges of these rows and might play with that idea at some point. I guess I'd have to applique them down onto a backing fabric; could be interesting.) 

I cut those rows into curves and set them into a pretty hand-dyed blue fabric which I've also had for years and years.  Then I auditioned some borders along the bottom.

I loved this brown and green strip.

But in the end I used a dark purple which I also inserted in narrow curves among the strip-pieces batiks.   I thought about doing some hand stitching in the blue areas but decided not to.

 I liked the result so well that I decided to hang it in the hall outside my studio.  That meant I had to cut the piece into a narrower size so it would fit that space.   It finished up at 11 1/2" wide and 15" long.  (The edges are even, despite how it looks in the photo; one of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to take better photos!)

Here's a detail of the piecing.  To quilt it I just stitched along each curve.  Minimal, for sure, but it didn't need more.  

The other quilt is bigger, 24 x 30." I started this one by making free form blocks and then I cut them down into a uniform size.  I also made a bunch of squares from a lovely flower batik. Then I put all the blocks on the design wall and had a fun time arranging them.    

I did extensive quilting on this piece as the flowers and strip-pieced blocks seemed to cry out for it. And it was a lot of fun to make up quilting designs and to use my new quilting rulers to guide some of the stitching.  I was sorry when it was all done.

Somewhere along the way I decided that I'd give this little guy to one of my guild's "outreach" programs which supplies area hospitals with quilts for the preemie babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units.  So I backed it with a sweet giraffe fabric made out of flannel, all nice and cuddly for a little baby. 

But now I'm not sure if the preemies are supposed to have flannel on their quilts; someone told me flannel could be bad for babies with respiratory problems.  So I'm just going to hang onto it until I can get an answer.  Maybe by the time I do I'll be ready to give it up!   Sometimes it's hard to part with a quilt even if you have no need for it yourself.  

So, do you think these two quilts made a dent in my pile of batik scraps?  Ha!  Here's the drawer, and you can see that it's still overflowing! 

Linking up to Nina Marie Sayre's "Off the Wall Friday" blog.