occasionally really hits the spot.
I’ve been playing with scraps since I was about 4-5. My mama made me gorgeous Barbie clothes but complained that I tried to make my own by wrapping them in scraps.
I can’t help it. I LOVE scraps. I can’t throw them out, especially cotton. But sometimes I get on a jag to use some of them up. That happened this week. I just can’t seem to start on anything new until I clear out some of the piled-up cluttery scraps. AT LEAST I had many of them cut into 3″, 2 1/2″ and 2″ squares. That helps because I can usually get rid of under 2″ by saving them to give to children for collages.
The piles of squares get sorted by size and color and become charming little jewels of miniature quilts aka hot pads, more than I’ll ever need myself for cooking but fun to have at craft fairs or for gifts. I use up cotton batting, too, two layers.
I just quilt these diagonally most of the time, in robotic mode, sewing corner to corner without marking. However, they could make great little practice projects for quilting. Below is from a bigger quilt, but you get the idea, here a spiral sun. Not perfect, but hey! It’s quilted, right?
It’s also great practice for binding. I think I can almost bind in my sleep now! By the way, all my patterns give binding instructions. I usually say to sew to the top and wrap to back, then whip by hand. The reality for me, though, is that I sew to the BACK, wrap to the front and topstitch, using an edgestitch foot (with a blade down the middle—not a cutting blade and not the hemming foot).
If you just can’t tolerate another hot pad and need more of a challenge, you can always try a scrappy pattern. This kite pattern is done with paper-piecing, and mine was a “charm” quilt with every fabric different. That’s always fun!
Here’s a baby quilt I made with lots of pastel fabrics.
If you need something more planned and organized, make your own pattern/color combination in a quick runner. Not everyone can tolerate a mishmash of colors. This may be more soothing to your psyche and you can make any length you want. Having one solid/semi-solid color repeated throughout gives it some stability or anchor.
This little log cabin is even a scrappy quilt, just done with blues-purples and pinks, but little scraps paper-pieced: “Love in a Little Log Cabin” wall quilt. You could actually just use bigger log cabin block and make a bed quilt, but then you probably wouldn’t be able to use up too many scraps.
Suit yourself–make up your scraps or get rid of them. Just don’t throw them out because there are many quilters like me who take in orphans!!