The Ultimate Scrap Buster

It's no secret I've been on a mission to use up all of my scraps this summer and I've been having fun doing it.  But after five, yes five, scrappy quilt tops still didn't empty those scrap bins (which are really not all that big by the way), I was ready for this seemingly never ending project to end.  So I came up with a plan to make The Ultimate Scrap Buster Quilt.  I knew it was going to result in a huge mish-mash of fabrics with nothing in particular to unify them.  I figured it would either be a brilliant piece of abstract art or the ugliest quilt ever made.  :-) I think I ended up with something in between.

First I cut everything I wanted to use into strips.  The length and width was determined by the piece of fabric I started with.  I would orient the scrap to get the longest strip possible whether that was 40" or 4" and then I would cut that up into strips starting at 3.5" wide if the piece was wide enough down to 1.5" if that was all I could manage.  Anything smaller than 1.5" went into the basket for dog bed stuffing.

I then sewed all the 1.5", 2" & 2.5" strips of like width together end to end.  I ended up with what felt like mile long strips of each width.  The 1.5" strips were then sewn to the 2" strip to give me a 3" wide strip set.  There was still a long, long length of the 2" strips left so I cut that in half and sewed the two halves together to make a 3.5" strip set.

I chopped those long strip sets up into random lengths around 5 - 7 feet long.  These were added to my stacks of 3" & 3.5" strips.

Are you following me so far?

The 3" strips and strip sets were sewn end to end.  Same with the 3.5" stack.

A day and entire spool of thread later, I had mile long strips at 2.5", 3" & 3.5" wide.  The 2.5" strip was sewn to the 3.5" strip which gave me a 5.5" wide strip set.  The 3" strip was cut in half and sewn together to make another 5.5" strip set.

I'll bet you can see where I'm going with this now.

Now that both strip sets were the same width, they were also sewn end to end.  At this point, I simply brought the two ends of the incredibly long 5.5" strip together and started sewing down the long side (jelly roll race style) until I came to the end and cut off the end at the fold.  So of course now my strip was 10.5" wide.  Doubling it up one more time I got a 20.5" wide strip set.

I couldn't believe how long the strip set was.  If I continued on in this way, I would end up with a truly giant quilt top.  So I decided I'd better measure what I had and decide if I wanted to keep doubling it, or perhaps come up with a new plan.  Turned out my strip was about 450" long.  So I cut it into three 150" lengths and sewed those together to end up with a giant piece of patchwork at about 60" x 150".  Easily enough to make three lap sized quilt tops.

I started thinking about what I might use for backing on these and had an epiphany.  This giant piece of patchwork fabric could become backing for the two quilt tops I had yet to finish!

So that is my new plan.  I will use this as backing for my jacob's ladder and star quilt tops and whatever is left will either be saved to back a future quilt or it will get it's own backing to make it my final scrap quilt of the summer.

And the best part...an empty scrap bin!!!!

Flower Power - My Scrappy Summer continues

Two string quilts complete and yet my scrap bins were still quite full.  I could do another string quilt like the first two, but I was ready to move on to something different.  So I visited the website of Bonnie Hunter who is somewhat famous in quilting circles for her beautiful scrap quilts.  She has a huge collection of free patterns available for download and while looking through them, the pattern she calls String X really caught my eye.  It could probably still be called a string quilt, but it was a new take that I hadn't seen before and looked like it would lend itself perfectly to using up all of the 5" squares I had laying around.

Bonnie's pattern/tutorial uses a foundation for constructing the center bands of fabric strips but I'm not a fan of having to tear out paper later so I'll avoid it when I can.  And in this case, I could.  I cut my 5 inch squares into random width strips and then just started sewing them together into long bands.  After I had what felt like enough, I trimmed them down to 4 1/2" x 10 1/2" rectangles.  From there I added the two background triangles on either side of the rectangle as described in Bonnie's tutorial.

I did end up needing to supplement the 5" squares with other fabrics out of my scrap bins in order to make enough blocks for a decent sized lap quilt so I was finally starting to feel like I was making a dent in the scrap pile.

Since the majority of the 5" squares I started with were floral fabrics, I named this quilt

Flower Power

Still Stringing Along - More of My Scrappy Summer

Once I finished my first string quilt, Stringing Along, and realized my scrap pile was just as big as ever, a second string quilt seemed like the way to go.  Maybe this second one would use up all those scraps, or at least make a noticable dent in them.

My hope with Stringing Along had been to create a sort of half square triangle (HST), or log cabin effect by having one half of each block be made from lighter fabrics and the other half be from darker fabrics.  I was not completely successful with that.  The vast majority of my scraps fell more into the medium range rather than light and dark.  And what truly light and dark fabric I had got used in that first quilt.  So with this second string quilt, while my construction method was basically the same, I decided to try using color instead of value to achieve the desired HST effect.

I still used the white center strip, but this time I put warm colors on one side and cool colors on the other and I increased the block size to 9 inches.  This was much more sucessful in creating the contrast between the two halves of the block that I was looking for.

Originally I thought I would arrange the blocks into a chevron pattern.





But after getting all the blocks constructed and placing them up on my design wall, I decided I liked it better when I put the blocks into a layout that created the look of squares on point.

From there it didn't take long to get the top sewn together and then add some simple quilting.

Another string quilt complete!  I absolutely love how this one turned out!

Still Stringing Along

My Scrappy Summer - Stringing Along

Like many quilters, I tend to save every little scrap of fabric leftover from the projects I make.   And when I say every little scrap, I mean every little scrap.  If it is a strip more than 1" wide or a square larger than 3", chances are it's going to end up in my scrap bin.  If it's smaller than that it goes into the basket of scraps that I give to a gal I know who uses them to stuff dog beds for the animal shelter.

I have those scraps roughly organized by size/type into some stacking bins.  One section is full of small odd sized pieces, one has strips of varying sizes, and the other two have larger scraps - like maybe 1/8 - 1/4 yard pieces.

The hope of course is that I will be able to use those scraps in some future quilts.  But it seems like every time I look through the scraps thinking I'll find just what I need for whatever project I'm working on, nothing seems quite right.  So those scrap bins keep getting more and more full to the point where it was feeling like the scrap situation was really getting out of hand.  I was even considering dumping everything into the dog bed basket just to get rid of it.

Then in May I went to the monthly Tucson Quilter's Guild meeting.  During "show and tell" I saw a string quilt that one of the members made and a lightbulb went off in my head.  String quilts are a great way to use up scraps!  Right then and there I decided I would go home and make a string quilt.  I figured that would use up most of what I had and get my scraps back under control.

Traditionally string quilts are sewn onto a foundation of some kind.  Usually a square of muslin or newspaper or even pages from old phone books.  I've always felt that using muslin was a waste of fabric and made the resulting quilt too heavy and I wasn't thrilled with the idea of having to remove paper from a bunch of quilt blocks.  So I opted to go with a more improvisational approach.

Based on a suggestion from my friend Merry Kay, I decided to use only white, off white, or other really light colored fabric for the center strip on each block.  And then I thought I would separate out the rest of my scraps into light and dark piles and put light fabrics on one side of the center strip and dark fabrics on the other.  As it turns out though, the majority of my scraps were all more in the bright/medium range rather than dark and light.  So I did the best I could and ended up with piles of dark"ish" and light"ish" fabrics.

Then I cut my center fabrics into random width strips and subcut those down to about  10" or 11" each to span the diagonal of a 6 1/2" square - the size I had chosen for my blocks.

From there I just started adding strips (also cut into random widths) using my 6 1/2" square ruler as a template to rough cut the strips down to size as I went.

Once I got enough strips sewn onto either side of the center strip, I trimmed the block down to size.  I kept going until I ran out of the center strips I had pre-cut.

It was fun trying out different layouts for the resulting blocks and ultimately I decided on an off-set diamond pattern.

I had some bold floral fabric in my stash that I loved but had never found a use for and this seemed like the perfect project for it.  So that became the border.

Just Stringing Along

I am so happy with the result.  I love this quilt and had tons of fun making it.  

BUT as it turns out, this barely seemed to make a dent in my scrap stash.  In fact I felt like somehow my pile of scraps had grown larger instead of smaller.  By now though, I was on a mission to use up those scraps.  Thus began "My Scrappy Summer."  Stay tuned for future blog posts about the other scrap quilts I've been making over the last couple of months.

The Lion King Cherrywood Challenge 2016

7/8/16 update

Challenge Finalists were announced today and Giraffic Park made the cut!
Which means I needed to send it to Cherrywood in Minnesota where it will be professionaly
photographed and included in the commemorative book for the challenge.  Then it will go through a second round to determine if it will be included in the traveling exhibit.

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In 2014 Cherrywood Hand-Dyed Fabrics sponsored a quilting challenge based on the Broadway musical Wicked.  The resulting exhibit was absolutely stunning.  I was able to see it in person at The Road To California quilt show in 2015 and I was blown away with the artistry, creativity and skill displayed in those quilts.



So when Cherrywood announced a new challenge for this year, I jumped at the chance to participate!

I bought my challenge fabric bundle (consisting of three lovely gold/yellow fat quarters and one black fat quarter) the first day they became available in January.  The challenge was to use the fabrics in the challenge bundle to create a 20" x 20" quilt inspired by Disney's The Lion King the Musical.  Participants could use additional Cherrywood fabrics as long as the challenge fabrics made up at least 60% of the quilt.  Deadline for submissions was July 1, 2016.  120 finalists would then be chosen to become part of a special exhibit which will travel to major quilt shows around the country.

Though I have seen the annimated The Lion King movie, I have not yet been fortunate enough to see the live musical, so I spent some time searching the internet for photos to give me some ideas.  The images that captured my imagination and inspired me the most all included a beautiful golden sun on a gorgeous orange/red background as the stage backdrop. I decided almost immediately that sun was going to be a focal point in my design.  It took me quite a while to weed through all the other ideas crowding my head.  Several months in fact.  It was early May before I felt ready to actually start cutting and sewing fabric.

The first thing I did was to use an improvisational curved piecing technique to create my sun.

Then I got stuck again trying to figure out how to use the rich golds of the challenge fabrics to make the background for my sun when what I really wanted to do was recreate the luscious oranges and reds of the images in my head.  Weeks passed before I decided to go ahead and do just that.  I pulled the colors I wanted from my precious stash of Cherrywood fabric and used the same piecing technique I had used on the sun to create my background.  YES!  Now I was getting somewhere.




From here my plan was to applique on "the tree of life" and quilt some animals into the tree trunk and perhaps some symbols into the background.  But now I had a dilema.  Even using the black challenge fabric for the tree, I didn't think I was going to meet the 60% challenge fabric requirement.

I already intended to add a strip of one of the darker golds to the bottom to give myself something to ground the tree, but that still might not be enough.  So I figured I would have to add a border of some kind.  I toyed with the idea of making a border that might suggest a lion's mane and went so far as to piece together some scrap fabric to see how that would look.





I was satisfied I could get the lion mane look I wanted but I wasn't sure I liked the combination of the test border with my background. And I was not happy with the idea of putting a "box" around my lovely sun and background.

I started laying fabric around the background piece hoping inspiration would strike.  And it did!  I could make the border asymetrical and just put it on two sides.  And I could curve that border so it would look more graceful, and I could add a pieced or appliqued element between the border and the background.  Oh, the ideas were coming fast and furious now!  I sketched out a few of those ideas and finally settled on this one.   

New stumbling block.  I had a vague idea of how to make the curved flying geese strip, but I had never actually done it before and I was getting dangerously close now to the submission deadline.  Only a few days left.  I was too excited by the idea to give up on it.  I found a short YouTube video by Gail Garber showing how to draft the free form flying geese foundation and I made a small test strip with more scrap fabric.  That seemed to work out just fine so I moved on to the real thing.


Success.  But at what cost?  The whole process of researching, testing and sewing took up an entire day.  I had only about 48 hours left until the submission deadline.

The next day was a bit stressful for me as I worked non-stop to complete the quilt top and get it ready for quilting. Normally I would hand stitch my applique but the clock was ticking so I used turned edge machine applique to attach the sun and the flying geese.  I traced some generic giraffe images to make templates for cutting my giraffe silhouettes out of the black challenge fabric that was already backed with Misty Fuse fusible webbing.  I drew my tree trunk on freezer paper which was then ironed on to the front of the black fabric and I cut that out.  The cloud-like tree tops were cut freehand from that same black fabric.  And finally all of those pieces were ironed onto the quilt top.  Whew! By the end of the day I had managed to finish the quilt top, get it sandwiched with the backing and batting and had even done the outline quilting around the applique elements.

A few hours of sleep and I was back in the sewing room and on to the quilting.  I wanted to do something really elaborate in the border area but time considerations meant I had to go with what I was already comfortable doing.  So taking my friend Sue M.'s suggestion I put feathers and pebbles in that area.  Soon it was all quilted except for the sun.  Back when I was considering the lion mane border, I had also considered quilting a lion's head into the sun and extending those quilting lines out to meet the mane in the border.  Even though I had nixed the lion mane border idea, I still liked the lion in the sun quilting concept.  But now my tree and giraffes were in the way.  They would obscure a large part of the face.  Thankfully inspiration struck again.  I could just offset the face to the edge of the sun and then most of the features would still be visible.  For a person who truly appreciates asymetry, it sure takes me a long time to think about using it in my own designs!

Finally the quilting was done and a few hours still remained to sew on the facing, take photographs and complete the submission process.  Just one more important decision to make.  This quilt needed a name.  Before I could even ask for suggestions, my husband Tom blurts out, "You should call this Giraffic Park."  Perfect!

I spent those last few hours frantically applying the facing and fussing with every Ott Light in the house trying to get proper lighting to take photographs that would show off all the important elements of the quilt.

Finally, with only 40 minutes left before registration would close, I completed my submission.  Talk about cutting it close!!!  It was a crazy few days there towards the end and I must thank my friend Sheryl Z. for keeping me sane by letting me bounce ideas off of her at all hours. But now that it''s all said and done, I couldn't be happier with the result.

Giraffic Park

A few days after registration closed, Cherrywood announced they received a total of 304 entries!  I am so excited to see what everyone else has come up with.  After seeing the Wicked Challenge, I know there will be some exceptional work done by the finalists in this challenge too.  I will be so thrilled if I am chosen to be among them.  But for now, I am contenting myself with the satisfaction of a job well done.