Small bits and pieces

I am exhausted from a long week, and it’s already quite late; however, my daughter pushed me into this blog, and I feel guilty if I don’t do at least one post a week.  So, rather than something witty, or a long story, I’m going to cheat and do a show and tell this week.

There will be two subjects today:

1.        I’ve talked quite a few times about using my scraps.  I will show a few of the projects and details about them.  My goal is to show that everything can be used and provide some inspiration to others.

2.       Test pieces – Most of my quilts are planned and executed as a single piece.  However, when I create a piece for a challenge, I like to plan it out far more thoroughly.  Many times, I create a test piece that is either a smaller version, or a part of the planned piece. 

Using the Scraps

Piece One:  Green Scraps

If I have small pieces of fabric (smaller than a quarter yards) left over when I am and done piecing the top, I cut those pieces into standard sized squares and into 1 ½, 2, 2 ½, 3, etc., wide strips.  The strips get rolled up with same sized strips from other quilts according to color family.  Additionally, when I am done quilting a quilt and I trim the edges – the overage from the backing also gets cut up.

This large table topper / crib sized quilt/ large wall hanging piece is a result of my green and beige/tan/brown strips in a variety of sizes and some 3 inch squares of green.  These scraps are all from a variety of quilts.  The binding is also scraps from my color rolls.  This is what is called “scrappy binding”.

Piece Two:  Purple Scraps

This narrow table runner is also from a variety of quilts.  I took a pile of patterned purple scraps and made “quarter square triangles” with them.  Each square has triangles from four different fabrics.   I set those squares on point (diamond) and took solid purple scraps - some are left whole, other are cut in half - and used them to fill in the spaces.  The binging is a scrap, even though it is all the same fabric. 

Piece Three:  Strip pieces

Now we shift a little.  This small table running is made from leftover pieces from a large quilt.  In that quilt, I made “strip sets” of beige-lighter green-dark flowered green-lighter green-beige.  The strip set is 6 ½ inch wide.  In the larger quilt, I cut 6 ½ squares from the fabric strips.  This piece is made from the narrower left over bits.  I staggered them a little, trimmed the edges at an angle and put a border around it.  Ta Dah!  Looks planned, doesn’t it?

Piece Four:  Strip pieces deux

There are two things going on here.  My friend made the same quilt that I mention above (with the strip sets) but in different colors.  It was actually a class I taught in my quilt group.  Her strip sets were white-pink-black-pink-white.  These are here scraps.  Also, I liked the strip set idea so much, that I made another quilt for a friends and used grays and blacks for a strip set.  The pieces in the center are left over from that.  The small print white fabric with black and pink was a piece from my stash and matched all perfectly!  The binding is black left over from another project altogether.

Piece Five – boxes

I made a large quilt where I cut 2 ½ squares and framed them with 1 ½ inch pieces.  The fabric in the center of one row was then used as the outer in the next row.  Here’s a picture of the finished quilt: 

I made five or six runners and toppers from the leftover pieces – including at least two fabrics that I decided not to use in the finished product, but had cut up already.  The binding is from my stash.

Practice Makes Perfect!

Piece Six – black, white, which one?

My challenge piece for my quilt group this year, which I discussed in my last post, was this quilt:

I was only allowed black, white, pink and purple for the challenge.  I knew that either black or white was going to be the background, but just couldn’t picture it in my mind.  I decided to make the center part of the quilt with each background and then decided.  Obviously, I went with the black (you’ve seen the finished quilt twice now).  However, while I wasn’t enamored of the white background, I thought I did a fine job with the piece, so I finished off the center, and quilted it.  It’s a nice sized table topper or wall hanging.

Piece Seven – New Challenge

I’ve talked about Ranae Merrill’s spiral quilts in the blog before.  I’ve also mentioned that I’m doing a new challenge.  This is another one where I get a few colors – black, white, black and white, and dark green.  I’m not going to show the pattern I’ve designed with Ranae’s spiral templates yet, but I did decide to do some testing and figured that I’d make the test piece pretty colorful.  This is the eight pieces (four squares made of two triangles each) that will make up the center of my challenge.

 And here's a close up of one section