Many of you have asked what to do with the scraps that are
accumulating from fussy cutting the fabric.
Like you, I'm accumulating quite a pile of “swiss cheese” and, since I
don't like to throw away fabric, I've decided to use mine. Today, I'm going to share one way to use lots
of little bits and pieces!
When I have fabric that looks like this
I first cut off any parts that may still have potential for
future fussy cut blocks and put that back into my Lucy Boston stash.
With what's left, I cut strips, if possible. I keep all my strips in containers sorted
according to strip width. I have several
strip “collections” in separate containers.
When a container gets full, it's time to start a new strip quilt – maybe
a log cabin, or a rail fence, or one of many patterns available for jelly roll
size strips.
The problem is what to do with all the little bitty pieces
that are left. Many people choose to
throw them away, which may sound wasteful, but if you're just going to collect
them and never do anything with them that's probably the best solution. Most of us have sewing rooms already filled to over-flowing. There's no sense in keeping things we're never going to use.
When my scrap bag started to overflow, I decided to make a
quilt using Baby Bow Tie blocks. I chose
Baby Bow Ties because they are so easy to make and they use even the tiniest
pieces of fabric. Each of my blocks
finish at 2”.
The block I'm making requires no inset or "Y" seams. Here's what you need to make one block:
- Two 1 1/2” squares of background fabric – this
can be scrappy, but I chose to use solid white because I wanted a strong
emphasis on the bow ties, and, also, white allowed me to use even the lightest
scraps in my scrap bag and my bow ties still showed up. In addition, my bag of white scraps was
overflowing and getting rid of two bags of scraps at the same time sounded
really good to me!
- Two 1 1/2” squares of colored fabric.
- Two 1” squares of colored fabric – I tried to
keep these the same color as the 1 1/2” squares, but if you don't have enough
fabric to do that, just substitute something similar – it's called “making do” and adds a lot of interest to your blocks.
I organize the cut colored squares on paper plates – ten or
twelve sets per plate – and then stack the plates by the sewing machine. Each day I try to sew at least one “plate
full”. It's amazing how fast the
finished bow ties start stacking up!
The sewing is simple.
Using a sew & flip technique, sew the two 1” squares across the
diagonal to a corner of the two white squares.
Press over, and trim off the bottom layers. (You have my permission to throw away the
little snippets – even I have a limit to what I'll save!).
Next step is to sew the white squares and the 1 1/2” colored
squares together into four-patch blocks making a Baby Bow Tie block. Square up the block to 2 1/2”.
When you have a fairly large collection of Bow Tie blocks,
start piecing them into larger Bow Tie blocks.
I'm using sixteen Baby Bow Ties all sewed together in the same direction
to make larger 8” finished Bow Tie blocks.
These will be the building blocks for my quilt. They can be turned in different directions to
get some really interesting, and sometimes abstract, designs.
I don't have my quilt finished yet. I don't even have many 8” blocks made, but I
do have a collection of Baby Bow Ties that is growing larger every day. Here is a picture of all 1,343!
As you can see, my container is overflowing and, by now you
know my philosophy – if it's overflowing, do something with it! My goal is to make 1550 Baby Bow Ties which
should be enough for a large lap-size quilt.
This is what I hope my quilt looks like when I'm finished.
I saw this picture on the Temecula Quilt Co. blog and loved it!
There is absolutely nothing more beautiful than a scrap
quilt! The best part is that you can
combine fabrics from a lot of different genres and they'll all work
together. You can even use the ugliest
fabric in your stash – if you cut the pieces small enough, even ugly fabric is
beautiful!
Now, here's the best part!!!
When I had 1,000 little blocks made, I started wondering how much fabric
I had used, so I got out the calculator.
It takes 4½ yds. of colored fabric and 3 yds. of white fabric to make
that many blocks! And that was ALL out
of my scrap bag!! Fabric that many
people would have thrown away. I
couldn't believe my scrap bag would even hold that much fabric, but, believe it
or not, I haven't even used up half the bag.
There's still another quilt waiting to happen in there, which I've
already started – this time with baby Four-patch blocks.
I would love to hear what you've been doing with your
scraps. Comment below or send me
pictures and I'll share them in future posts.
If you're new to the Lucy Boston Blog Along, click
here to get to the beginning of the posts which started in April and post every Thursday.
Click here to check out our
Pinterest board to see pictures of blocks that others have made.
Check out our website
here if you need more paper piecing supplies.
.jpg)
