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Sunday, October 2, 2011

A Love Affair with Scraps

Happy Sunday Evening to All - and I hope you had a fun quilty weekend.  I spent a lot of time 'processing'...  lots of prep work - cutting bindings, cutting borders, making sandwiches, etc. 

Now I have a nice stack of charity quilts ready to quilt:::I like to see them all snuggled up, inside out... there's a fourth one hiding at the bottom...
and, after doing the sandwiching, I set to work on that basket of strings I had overflowing on my sewing table:  
These are all strips cut off the edges of things when the piece gets too small to go back on the shelf, or the trimmings from the edges of the backs of quilts.  I don't know how the pile gets so big so fast - it just does... and about a year ago I promised myself to STOP filling up plastic storage bins with scraps - they simply must be sewn up into SOMETHING - and for a year, I've created no new scrap bins - this is as bad as the strips can get (I'll confess later about the odd-shaped pieces that are hidden under the cutting table)
I sewedsome of  the strips into strip sets - LOTS of strip sets........  and then the strip sets into 6 1/2 inch squares:
 And turned the squares into snowball blocks with some bright yellow fabric.  I'm not sure what I will do with these, but I like them... 

 And - I got lots of cute little bonus triangles when I trimmed up the snowball blocks... aren't they cute - oh dear - now I need to think of something to do with THOSE !!!!

So - after sewing, and cutting, and sewing, and ironing - is the basket empty now???

OF COURSE NOT - ITS THE MAGIC SCRAP BASKET - it lasts forever!!!  I swear it's amazing - it is dramatically less piled up, but it's still a long way from empty ...... 
..............just a few scraps - and those will go into a big bag that I am collecting for someone who uses even the tiniest scraps... 

It feels SO good to make good use of these left-over pieces of fabric...  I love scraps...

Hope everyone is looking forward to a good week...

Kate

ps:  Blogger just seems to like this little duplicate photo so much it won't let me delete it ..... sometimes it has a mind of its own!!!

5 comments:

Linda at Roscoe's Ma said...

I like you magic scrap basket and think I should consider doing the same. Before you know it, you'll have a quilt. Great idea!

Catskill Quilter said...

Kate, I love your snowball blocks - I often sew my shorter strips together, but have done nothing from there. When you sew your squares onto the 4 corners of the blocks to make snowballs, do you stitch the extra triangle sets before you cut them off? I am unsure how to get these tinier blocks a uniform size!

dot said...

How funny, I am doing the same thing with neutral colored scrap square blocks. I do know how I am going to use mine though, I am making 84 blocks for a quilt I am making.

Elaine Adair said...

What a great start to a colorful quilt! Looks good so far, and I'm thinking about the fun of putting those HSTs into use somewhere on that same quilt, since the colors will blend perfectly. Good job.

Kathleen said...

Yes - I do stitch the " bonus triangles" before cutting off the corner square... it's the only way the little ones end of square for me... and then, unfortunately, they must be trimmed... trimming is NOT my favorite! Kate

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