I am so pleased to be the guest blogger for Sarah Craig who blogs at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. I had the great pleasure of meeting her at QuiltCon2019 and have been quilting for this drive since then! She has been running the Hands 2 Help Comfort Quilt Challenge every year, except last year, when Mari of Academic Quilter stood in. Mari did a great job with so little notice, but we are all so glad to have our fearless and compassionate leader, Sarah back. When Sarah put a call out for guest bloggers, I said yes!
I am sharing with you two “quickies” today. One is a quick quilt and the other is a quick dinner. I made this quilt in 1 day, put the binding on the following day (and I could have if pushed done it the same day). The dinner is a able to prepped and put on the table in 20 minutes. For sure, it doesn’t take away from your sewing time and my husband has been “trained” to prep much of the meal, so I just come down when the oven is turned on to do the magic!
My Quickie Strip Quilt
I made this on my small longarm but you could do a very similar thing on your domestic machine.
- Prepare strips of fabric for your quilt. I made 5 strips to finish at about 48″ long and 40″ wide.
[Mine were 2 @ 11.5″; 2 @ 8.5″; and 1 @ 9.5″] - Prepare and attach the backing.
- Prepare and attach the batting to the back.
- Run a “plumb line” of basting stitches across the top to keep your top straight when you put it on.
- Line up the first piece with your plumb “basting” line.
- Baste down the top of the first piece and the sides of the first piece.
NOTE: I basted the bottom THEN removed those stitches, realizing I would never hit them when I sewed the second piece on! - Align the second piece to the bottom of the first piece, right sides together.
- Use a regular stitch length to stitch the two pieces together.
- Finger press the second strip open, baste the sides down.
- Align the third piece to the bottom of the second piece, right sides together.
- Use a regular stitch and sew a horizontal line.
- Finger press. Baste the sides.
- Repeat the align/stitch/finger press/baste until you are at your last strip.
- On the last strip, baste the sides and bottom to the batting and back.Now re-roll your quilt the quilt!
Quilters using a domestic machine may want to quilt as you go or you may want to construct the whole quilt too, then quilt, too. Honestly it would work either way on either machine. My choice was to get the piecing done, then the quilting.
I used two pantographs, Modernish in the dark blue and Wandering Stars in the red and print fabrics.
Miracles! I can tell you in less than 4 hours this quilt was made and I prepped the binding while it was quilting. I was originally planning on three motifs, but the Wandering stars (a free design from Quiltable) worked well in both the red and print that I was happy!
I trimmed using the lines of the strips to line up the ruler. I started in the middle on both sides and worked my way to the top and bottom. My last trims on each side was a horizontal one to begin the top and bottom. By the time I did the top and bottom, it was pretty easy to make the last cuts. It worked like a charm. In fact, I checked the measurements before I bound the quilt and was tickled that the 3 measurements on width and the 3 from top to bottom were nearly identical!
The back is a fun print that I had that I think any child would love. Who could resist the smiling clouds and stars on the front and the festive multicolor fireworks on the back!
And now that we have finished a quick quilt, let’s make a quick dinner!
A Quickie Dinner – Mexican Pizza
Sarah said we could share anything, and mentioned recipes. I thought I would share this fun meal we make – Mexican Pizza. The ingredients are simple and I make this for 2. It takes about 20 minutes total! You could probably use the microwave and cut the time to 10 minutes, but I do it in the oven and while it warms, I do everything else.
- 4 Corn tortillas (my preference)
- Refried Beans
- Mexican Shredded Cheese
- Toppings: Salsa and/or Guacamole or sour cream or plain yogurt.
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
- Put 4 corn tortillas on a baking sheet.
- Open the can of refried beans into a plastic storage container.
- Smash the contents together to fit into the container and with a spatula “cut in half”. Cut one of the halves in half again.
- Apply refried beans to corn tortillas with spatula. Use one quarter for two tortillas, and the other quarter for the remaining two tortillas. I spread the remaining beans in the container and put into the refrigerator.
- Place shredded cheese on top of each of the tortillas.
- Put in oven for 7 minutes.
- Remove from oven and plate.
- Add toppings at the table!
My Quick Strippy Quilt Stats
My Quick Strippy Quilt: 40″ x 48″
Piecing thread: So Fine Silver (408)
Quilting Threads: Top: Glide Navy(32965) and White (
Bottom: Decobob Grey
Pantographs: Modernish, Wandering Stars
Batting: Hobbs 80/20
Coming Up on My Blog
Fab Farm SAL Block 2 5/1
My Strippy Stars Quilt
Diatom Row 2
Fixing a T-Shirt Quilt
Ships Ahoy
Linking up
Beauties Pageant 214
Monday Musings
Favorite Finish Monthly Linkup
Fabric Stash
Fabric in this month: 12.26
Fabric out this month: 4.00
Fabric in this year: 36.25
Fabric out this year: 31.75
NET Fabric: +4.5 yards!
[Down from the last post, but still have one more quilt to add before the month is out]
Awesome post, Kathleen! I never considered actually piecing my quilt with my longarm – that’s a clever idea that I will have to try. We usually have lots of long pieces of fabric left over from our quilt backs, and this would be perfect for them! And the food looks great, too – what time shall i come over? LOL! Thanks for a great guest post!
Clever idea! Thank you for the recipe! I’m going to try this 🙂
Great idea for a quick quilt!! and who wouldn’t love Mexican pizza!!!
Both are fabulous ideas! I have made a strippy quilt on my longarm many years ago, kinda fun!! Thanks for the reminder:)
I love making strip quilts because it uses up jelly rolls or small leftover strips of fabric. I’d forgotten how easy they are…thanks for the reminder! Mexican pizza…yum.
Quilts don’t get much easier than that, especially if you can quilt as you go! Fun idea for dinner, too!
My one attempt at piecing on the longarm didn’t go well. Perhaps, I need to give it another try. Thanks for the tasty recipe, too!
Nice to meet you, Kathleen. The quick quilt is a great idea.
That is a great little quilt. I did a double-take and had to re-read the part where you said you prepped the binding… I thought you’d written ‘while I quilted’ and I was like, whoa! Is this a new method? Tip? Haha, then I realized it was not ‘I’ but ‘it’ was quilting! Yay for multi-tasking. I LOVE the quick dinner idea too! Just made a Southwest Salad last night with black beans, so this is in line with my southwest food vibe.
Such a great little quilt for H2H, Kathleen! I think I’ll be trying that Mexican Pizza idea. We usually have quesadillas once a week. This will be a good alternative…at least for me. The picky eater won’t touch anything with salsa or tomatoes…or most veggies! But he does love cheese and I can add pepperoni to his! Thanks for sharing.