It's been a struggle to get anything done around here lately, scrappy or otherwise. However, I found that sewing my tiny waste triangles into Half-Square Triangles and then sewing those into tiny Broken Dishes blocks was a good way to cope.
I would sew one day and then press the seams the next morning while it was still relatively cool in the house. There are 40 little blocks in that picture, each of which would finish at two inches square. I found a bag in my Parts Department that held another 130 such units. Who knew?!
The next step was to figure out what to do with all those little blocks. Or how to use at least some of them! I played around with possible arrangements, setting the units side by side. I like the look of a star four of them together can create:
It helps when the colors/values in the units are the same. When you're working with scraps that's not always possible. By the end of day yesterday I had this on my design wall:
I'd also had my fill of trying to get points to match to an acceptable standard. (You notice I did not strive for perfection.) Most of them turned out pretty well. The effort kept me focused on the work and not on how poorly I was feeling.
But now what? I had 19 of those little stars. I was not in the mood to sew more of them to each other so I took that first pair and surrounded them with scrap strips that finish at 2" each. My goal was to create a top for a cat mat for the animal shelter.
It will be about 20" x 26" when complete. It was fun to include strips of a dog print (the dark brown strip at the top in the photo) and this print down one short side:
I will back it with something that's been in the stash for too long and use scrap batting between the layers. I'll probably quilt it myself on my domestic machine, just stitching in the ditch. Or maybe I'll get brave and do some diagonal lines. Only time will tell. Our temperatures are supposed to return to what's closer to normal for us at this time of the year. We might even get some much needed rain. That will help considerably.
Scrap Happy Day is hosted on the 15th of each month by Kate in Australia and Gun in Sweden. To see what others have been doing with their scraps you can click through the link list below. Not everyone plays with fabric!
Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Tracy, Jill,
Claire, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Kerry, Claire, Jean, Jon, Hayley, Dawn,
Gwen, Bekki, Sue L, Sunny, Kjerstin,
Vera, Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2, Bear,
Carol, Preeti, Edith and Debbierose
Those are tiny gems Sue, they will make very fine cat mats!
ReplyDeletewhat a lot of work and that looks far to nice for a cat mat. Lucky cat!
ReplyDeleteGreat use of scraps, I think the cat will love the mat!
ReplyDeleteThose tiny scrap triangles! It's funny how you imagine that simple projects would work best when one feels under the weather but, you're right, sometimes a more complicated one is more likely to take your mind off things.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful! Love that you're making it for the animal shelter. Our kitty, Leahmae is a shelter rescue... I think though, she's really rescued us. We tease her that we should have named her panda after the pandemic. I think she was fostered with dogs because she behaves like one, always tail wagging and roly-poly. I really should make her her own quilt... though she's taken my knitted shawl as her own.
ReplyDeleteYour scrap triangles are great! Matching points are overrated... yours look perfect to me! Hope you feel better soon.... stay cool and stay safe xx
ReplyDeleteThose teeny triangles have inspired me. I collected a bowlful of triangle cut-offs when I made the Floribunda quilt. They were so pretty I couldn't just throw then out. I think they'll make a nice hand-sewing project for our next holiday, just arranged into a square, maybe? I don't have much colour-saturation contrast, only fully-saturated colours, so it'll look more random. Thanks for the inspiration!
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