big stitch ~ small projects

Lately I've been quite enjoying simple, repetitive, and highly meditative nature of hand quilting. Now, the projects I hand quilt are nothing fancy or large in size. They are mostly just pieces of scraps I sew together into small-ish blocks which I then turn into mats or coasters for our home.

Pretty lovely, aren't they? Scraps make my heart sing :)

Here's an in-progress photo for you to see.

I use pins (or safety pins) to hold the scrappy block and cotton batting together and usually mark a line or two for me to start stitching. I space my lines 1/4'' - 1/2'' apart and since my projects are pretty small I can just get away with eyeballing the distance. Oh, and I stitch through both the top layer as well as batting.

These are my favorite supplies for hand quilting (all self - explanatory, I think).

I'm especially excited about the two cotton threads in the upper left corner since they sort of feel and look like sashiko thread but are a lot cheaper to buy. I purchased mine locally but I'm sure you could find them online too.

Once my mats are quilted I trim off extra batting, add backing, and bind them the same way I would a quilt. I first add my binding to the front and hand stitch it on the back using running stitch.

Pretty fun, aren't they? And super, super useful which is what I like the most.

Do you like turning scraps into pretty projects? What are your favorites?

Svetlana