783 Spools: A Finish!

Spools

81 x 87

Hand quilted

783 three inch spools.

I made a few spools from scraps in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month from 2014-2016. 

I even twirled the seams on all these darned things so they would lay flat.  I was glad I did that when I decided to hand quilt. 

I am thinking this is truly a "charm quilt" in that no two spools are the same. But I actually am not sure. I keep thinking I see some fabrics in more than one spool but with making spools over a period of years I can't be absolutely certain a particular 1.5 inch scrap didn't get carried over from one year to the next. 

It's kind of a fun I Spy quilt (for me).  

I like quilts with lots of different fabrics because that's how my paternal grandmother always made her quilts - with lots of different fabrics from old clothes and whatnot.  I used to love to inspect the quilt and look at all the fabrics. Sometimes grandma would tell me stories about who wore the dress or shirt and how it was then sometimes made into something else like an apron before it finally arrived in a quilt. 

Originally I was thinking of quilting this on my DSM but it looked so "vintage" to me that I just felt it needed some hand quilting.  I had always wanted to hand quilt some Baptist Fans so decided this was the quilt that needed it.   I hand quilted with ecru (or was it white?) perle #12 that just happened to be on clearance which also convinced me the time was right to quilt some Baptist Fans.   I am soooooo glad I made that decision. It just adds to the vintage feel I was getting from this quilt.   It also adds LOTs of texture. 

I used a piece of dark brown polka dot fabric for binding. I had just enough for eight 2.5 inch pieces width of fabric which I thought would be enough to finish this off.   I never actually measure out my binding precisely before I sew it on  - I just kind of guesstimate how many pieces I need.   When I get down close to where I started I then cut off how much is extra, sew a joining seam, etc.   Well...I did NOT have enough binding and no more brown polka dot fabric left to add and nothing in the leftover binding fabrics looked like it would work. But there was a white on white piece of leftover binding in there so I added that and decided it would be my quilt label.   I used a sharpie and wrote: "Spools   2017" and my name, city and state.     Since I'm terrible at labeling quilts it worked for me.  In fact I might use that trick more often. 

The backing was a nice sheet from the thrift store. It had kind of a vintage feel too (and even better...it had butterflies). 

This was my goal #13

for 

Q1 2017 Finish-A-Long

Hand quilting?  Slow Sunday Stitching at Kathy's Quilts

LOTs of scraps?  Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun than Housework