Taming the scraps (part 2)

Bet you thought I gave up on taming my scraps! I surprised myself.

January 19th...pause for tendonitis then learn to plug away sensibly a bit at a time… April 30th

Even the strips are all trimmed to standard tidy widths.

Now the real challenge begins.  I need to actually use these scraps to make a quilt.  How will I bring myself to mix such a variety of fabrics that just don’t go together?!!!  Perhaps I’ll start by sorting them into lights and darks and go from there. I’m sure it will be an interesting experience.

First, however, I’m off to bind the last post’s sneak peak. (As usual I was overly optimistic about when I would get something done.)  After that  there are pieced borders to play with for the HST quilt, then a bit of free motion quilting on Kyoto Garden. Let’s not forget quilting Autumn Moons which did not get quilted last fall as planned.

I’ll get to the scrap quilt eventually!  In the meantime, I will make time to cut any new scraps down to size as soon as they appear.

Just a peek

Tonight I’m doing some simple quilting with the walking foot, hoping that tomorrow I’ll be able to get a start on the binding.  Maybe a finish on the weekend?

If I finish, I can move on to the pieced borders I’ve been mulling for the HST quilt.  I was lucky enough to find 2 fat quarters of a fabric I didn’t have enough of.  I had bought what I already had almost a year ago and these FQs were the last of that fabric left in the shop.  Maybe that bit of luck means these borders are supposed to work?

Not my usual choices

Fat quarters were on sale for 99 cents at JoAnn’s yesterday so I decided to go ahead and stretch myself a bit and buy fabric I usually wouldn’t.

I have three projects I want to be working on at the moment, but of course I have to tackle only one at a time.  These fabrics might win today…

252 units on the wall

Wednesday and Thursday I sewed and sliced, tore away paper and snipped dog ears.  Once that was done I could play. This is nice example of why designing with quilt design software will always be just a starting point for me.  It’s great to try out a lot of ideas but at some point I have to see the design in actual size for the final tweaking.

The layout on the left seemed perfect to me when printed out on an 8 1/2”x11” piece of paper.  Once the life sized fabric version was up on the wall, it just didn’t seem quite right.  Almost there but not quite.  I am much happier with the layout on the right. 

All those units still need to be sewn together but now that I know what it will look like I feel much less obsessed about it! I’ll get around to it a bit at a time.  I still have to ponder which directions to press the seams for optimal construction…

Just for fun, here’s a peek at the paper and dog ear debris 192 triangle squares left behind this week.

Out of curiosity, I also kept track of my time.  From when I started cutting the fabric to when I completed the layout on the right, I’ve spent 13.5 hours on this quilt so far.  Now I rather wish I had kept track with other quilts to see how they compare, time-wise.  Geeky of me, I know!

Assembly line

252 half-square triangle squares coming right up!  The first 84:

After writing my last post I looked through one of my quilting books to refresh my memory about how to construct multiple triangle squares by drawing a grid on the back of one of the fabrics and sewing along certain lines.  The next day I was trying to work up the enthusiasm to carefully measure and draw the grid when I took a break to check email.  Now I’m wondering if my computer listens in on conversations and goes out seeking relevant information all on its own.

Waiting in my inbox was junk mail from Quilt-Pro Systems about a “one day only sale” on Triangle Magic software.  I almost deleted it but since I was in the midst of pondering triangles, I clicked through to the product web page, and it turns out that this software prints out exactly the kind of grid I was planning to draw, for any size triangle square from 1” to 7”.  The sale price was just low enough that I didn’t mind buying it to try it out.

It worked!  Layer 2 fabrics, right sides together, pin to paper template, sew on the red lines, cut on the black lines.  The paper stabilizes the seam while pressing, and I am getting nice square units, properly square and exactly the size I want them to be!

These fabrics are all sewn and just need cutting and pressing.  I have 4 or 5 more to stack and sew.  I thought it would take me much longer to get all these units made up, but it looks like I may be ready to play with the layout by the end of the week!