Scrap Happy in September

The 15th of each month has been designated as Scrap Happy Day by Kate in Australia and Gun in Sweden. We are invited to share something we've made from scrap materials or something we've repurposed. There have been some pretty ingenious transformations among the regular participants. My scrap material tends to be fabric, and I most often turn them into quilts of one sort or another.

Over time I have developed a system for cutting patches and strips from leftover fabrics. I begin with the blocks that require the largest patches or the highest number of patches and work my way down to 1.5" squares. I let these patches accumulate until I feel the urge to do something with them. That's when blocks get made that tend to end up in the Parts Department. Eventually those blocks are used to make a quilt top.

Recently I noticed that my basket of 2" wide strips was pretty full. About that same time I had a series of headaches to deal with. One way I cope with them is to do some mindless sewing, whether by hand or by machine. Last month it was machine piecing I turned to. Without much thought I selected 2" strips from that basket and sewed them together, end to end, until I had pieced strips 12.5" long. Eight of those strips were then sewn together to create 12" (finished) blocks, I call these my Lego blocks. 

Sometimes when I make these blocks I only do a couple and then set them aside. This time I just kept making blocks until my basket was nearly empty. Before long I had a whole quilt top's worth of blocks. Well, a skinny quilt top. So I pieced together some 3.5" wide scraps for side borders and found a length of fabric to sash them. Another couple of strips added to the top and bottom gave me a flimsy about 61" x 82."

I will have to purchase backing fabric for this (and batting of course) but the whole top has been constructed solely from scraps. 😊

If you'd like motivation for using up your scrap materials, fabric or otherwise, leave a comment on Kate or Gun's blogs from the list below. And be inspired by what you see in the other blogs!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
 Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Alissa,
Lynn, Tierney, Hannah, Maggie

August Stitching

 For week 32 in the stitch journal project spearheaded by Kathryn of k3n clothtales we took inspiration from an exhibit of Judith E. Martin's work. One piece of Judith's that I found particularly inspiring was a long, long scroll of fabric couched down with embroidery floss. You can see pictures of it here. My sample piece is only 5" wide and 6.5" long. 

This is the front...

And this is the back of my piece.

The following week we observed the nature of cloth in the making of a fabric collage. I only used various cotton cloths whereas others included silks and linens and other materials. I did include a strip of handmade paper on mine: the pink in the upper right hand corner.

 

 

 We used the mola's of Panama as inspiration for week 34. The women of Panama do needle-turn reverse applique in their work. Some of it is amazingly intricate, made of many layers of different colors of cloth. My sample was only made of three layers and I left the edges raw. (It's meant to be a snake in case you were wondering.)

 

 

 

 The last week of August we used our orts - leftover pieces of thread long enough to be useful. I made rectangles of satin stitched embroidery floss out of my longer pieces and French knots with the shorter bits. In the end I had some room left over so I made cross stitches with a few strands of perle cotton too.

 

 

Kooky's postcard prompt (KoolKookyKreatures) for August was "Harvest Home." I chose to celebrate the fact that honey bees harvest pollen and store it in their home with some couched yarn and tiny bee charms.

 

 

 

 

 And now we're in September. The postcard prompt is "Autumn Hygge." I'm not sure at this point how I will approach this one but it will be fun to ponder!