Little Finishes

 Earlier this fall, I was trying to use up scraps and found that I didn't like the color combinations.  My friend Bailey is an NICU nurse and suggested finishing up the project as a mini quilt to donate.  The bassinet mattresses are 12.5" x 26".  So these 2 were my first attempt.  After using them at work, she found the 22x34" (flimsy size) was a bit too short on the sides to be convenient.

 So I started another round to use up some gifted fabric that I never liked.  This one is 26x36 before quilting.

Addendum 12/14: Here's the other one.  Using 2 orphan blocks from a larger quilt and scraps from several different red quilts.  It was a great way to practice some FMQ.  But the light contrasting back really shows off wobbles in my quilting as well as the fact that my machine needs a tune up since it is randomly adding weird loops on the back side of the stitching.

 This piece Was a Round Robin from 1995.  It's been my hand quilting piece for the last month.

Love the movement in the hand quilting. 

I may turn this into a big couch pillow. 

The problem with these "little" finishes is that there is actually a finite number of pillows one can use.

More Distractions. Scrubbies

 I've been collecting the mesh bags from onions and mandarin oranges thinking that they should make amazing, free scrubbies.  Today, I finally found a tutorial.  https://makeanddocrew.com/crochet-pot-scrubbers-produce-bags/

 I started with the orange bags.  Combined the mesh "yarn" with some cotton yarn I had on hand. It was far thinner than what was in the tutorial.  To be fair, there were 3 other tests of yarn with the plastic mesh before I came up with something that was OK. I tried both nubby stuff and standard acrylic yarn, but ended up going with with a thin cotton yarn for the best texture.

The instructions for the scrubbies are at Make and Do Crew  I ended up using the bags noted as NOPE in the tutorial.  Cut them wide enough to include at least 2 full diamonds so they didn't fall apart.  Then a tug to make them behave.  This also means that I needed twice as many produce bags as recommended. I also ended up just tying bits together with square knots, not the fancy fisherman's not suggested.  It also turns out to take 4-6 bags to make 1 scrubbie with this style.

As you can see from this final picture, adding some yarn really helps the final shape of the scrubbies.  The Right one is the mesh only.  The upper one includes a crochet cotton with the mesh.  And the bottom one is a light weight cotton yarn.

So excited to use up all my saved bits.  But a little discouraged that it takes so many to make a functional piece.  (Since what I thought might be 10 Christmas gifts is actually 2).