Solid Scraps Make a Quilt Party

Take one bin of solid scraps, sort them by size, sew them together. See what happens.

In prepping for those doodles I pulled out my solid scrap bin. I dug through it for the first few blocks, picking any oranges or darks for the project while the rest of the fabric looked on forlornly. After the first two doodles I realized that there were going to be a lot of stops and starts and I might as well be efficient. The solid scraps stepped up and volunteered for duty.

Sorted by size they sat patiently until their turn came up. Bit by bit, pair by pair, I sewed them together. The party grew with each seam. Pairs became four, sometimes three. Then four became eight, and so on. Not so much duty as celebration.

Eventually, the party required a little organization. I didn’t want anyone to feel left out while, at the same time, I had to make sure they all fit together. So what start out as nothing but sewing two pieces of fabric together at the end of a seam on an entirely different project required a bit of dedicated attention. I puzzled the groups together to make the most effective shaker. This is a party to end all parties!

Well, it was supposed to be a party to end all scraps, but that never actually happened. That’s because we all know that scraps multiply when you aren’t looking! Not so much party crashers, more like the condensation rings left on the wood furniture - they never quite go away. But nearly all the scraps made it in. And the bin is much, much lighter.

I wasn’t intending to start another quilt. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I have. My original thought was to float this piece in another fabric to serve as a quilt back.

Or I could make that idea into a quilt top?

Or I could turn what it is already into a stand alone quilt, a wall hanging?

Or I could wait until the solid scrap bin fills up a bit more and add to the party?

Or this could become pillows?

Or…

So many options. Right now, however, I have no clue and need a different leader and ender project while I sew my doodles. So this party is going into the stack of quilt tops to reflect upon its awesomeness.

More on this sewing machine next week…

Improv Piecing Doodles

Sometimes I feel like an impulsive child. The one who just barreled ahead, without thinking, infuriating their parents as they went. “What did you think would happen?” I am totally that parent. And I am totally that child.

I had an idea and just wanted to see what it would look like. I grabbed some scraps to play. Of course it would turn into a quilt! And here I was trying not to start any new quilts.

What did you think would happen?

Well, I didn’t think. I was just playing. And now it seems I’ve started a new quilt.

This represents 10 days of Morning Make sessions, plus maybe one or two stints in the evening. Just 20-30 minutes a day. For now I am calling these doodles. Lines on fabric. Pieced, not applique. I started in the scrap bin then pulled out from my actual solid stash. Initially I only went with orange, but after sharing the blocks on social media a few people mentioned that it looked like line drawings on the human forms, just in detail. That got me thinking so I started adding the browns. And I have a stack of pinks that will likely join in.

Other people said it looked like deconstructed basketballs, which I also see, but it less inspiring..

Like that impulsive child, I have no idea where it is going. Obviously it will be a quilt - I should have expected that - but what it will be is very much up in the air. Will I add sashing? Will I lay it out in a colour gradiant or by shape? How many blocks will I actually make? For now, I am just going to keep playing.

Setting myself up to sew right in front of the design wall feeds the creativity. Usually I am in this spot when I am machine quilting - so that the weight of the quilts does not pull off the table. I had moved the table here for just that, actually. Then I discovered I needed a new spool of thread. The delay meant the time to play. And now I am like “what quilt needs to be quilted?”

And oh, yes, there is a second, concurrent sewing project going on there. More on that next week.

Improv Quilts Can Be Precisely Pieced

Sometimes I just get in the mood for some precision piecing. Actually, it was more that I needed the distraction that comes with the need to focus when precision piecing.

The first of these blocks was probably made a decade or so ago. It was part of a BOM I found online called Constellations. I think I did the first 3 months and then never looked at or saw it again. Years back I tried to find the pattern to finish it because it was quite good, but never located it. Now and then - about once every year or two - I would pick a star block pattern I could find and make another block. I didn’t have to recreate the original quilt, after all! No plan, no rush though.

This is actually improvisational quilting. Yes, even though I am doing precision piecing. I define it as improv because I have no idea where I will end up. Improv = starting without knowing where you will end.

But this past week of dealing with stress and needing a different kind of break with my quilting brought out these blocks, and a path forward.

• 36 blocks needed

• 3 blocks of each star pattern

• Add more variation in the shapes of the stars for remaining blocks.

So I am digging through the scrap bins and raiding the stash for more combinations of fabrics, playing with the original colour scheme I started. I cut a block or two at night, to be ready for my Morning Make. And I’ve picked out patterns for the two new sets of three blocks I need to make to get up to 36 stars in total.

It’s exactly what I need right now.

Solid Triangle Play Quilt Top

In a way, it makes perfect sense to finish this quilt as summer ends. Although I started it a few years back, only as a class sample, it symbolizes the play of this past summer. And the stress relief that comes from play.

A bit of a loose plan - the rules of the game:

1. Each block to be made from only two fabrics.

2. Fabrics must be high contrast.

3. Piecing is improvisational.

4. Use the triangle and the many ways to make it, manipulate it, shape it to piece together the blocks.

That’s it. The rest of it evolved as it went, like kids making up new rules as they play the game. Square up to similar sizes once I’d made a few blocks. Oh look, I like it in rows so it goes in rows now. And then it was big enough and the game was over. Actually, the game was over and I just made it big enough.

(It finishes at about a lap size but I don’t know the actual measurements.)

As I shared the blocks over on Instagram I had some people mention different shapes they saw. How cool, like watching clouds! That completely changed my plan for quilting. For now, though, it gets added to the pile of quilt tops and moves places on the list of quilts under construction. Soon enough.

Now, as our brief moment of fall starts to pull back the curtain and as I ready myself and the family for our active schedule I will hang on to this spirit of play for it did me a load of good!