Scrap Project

Well, it's finally happened...I ran out of room!

Went to Ikea and bought a chest of draws to house most of my 'good' stash.  This was a bit handy as it also serves as a place for the little TV that I have in the sewing room.

As one does, I started to go through some of the other stuff that I seem to have stashed away in all sorts of containers in various places. Found an entire project from leftover blocks from a quilt made some years ago. This could be handy as a practice piece to trial some rulers on...

Have a box full of orphan blocks...am tempted to just chuck it out, but could not do it, so put it back in its place. Then I got to the strings...must say, I was getting slightly overwhelmed by then. Started sorting them into white and others.

...this is just a collection...have three more containers with various scraps. Not only that, I found several stacks of pre-cut shapes, i.e. 2 1/2in squares, some rectangle shapes, some leftover units that were sewn together...was almost like a treasure (could have used the white background in the Elizabeth Hartman patterns that I have been doing lately, rather than cutting up new fabric). By now I was definitely overwhelmed and thought that I need to make another string quilt. I did start a spiderweb quilt some years ago, however that takes a bit of effort to construct and you only use a small amount of strips at a time. I did lose my motivation for that as it is fairly time intensive. Similarly, a string quilt requires a foundation and judging from last time, it will not make a sizable dent in the strings available.

Went onto Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville website for some inspiration and came across the 'Happy Scrappy House' quilt. This was a bit like a trip down memory lane...I loved that quilt when I first saw it when I had just started quilting...had another look and decided that this was a good project to get rid of 2in strips in bulk, i.e. it will use up a longish 2in strip to make the house, some bigger pieces for the roof and the smaller white background pieces for the background. I may even get away with using bigger background pieces for the wonky surrounds. Still will have to make another string quilt out of the smaller strings, however I am hoping that the houses will 'eat up' a sizable portion of the scraps.

So, I made some houses yesterday

Very cute and yes, it does 'eat up' the longer strips to make the house in just one colour. This is helpful and should make that initial sizable dent in those strips. I will need some 42 blocks like this...if I make a few every now and then that should be achievable. I will deal with the wonky surrounds later once I see how much I have got left over. Fear not though, I have stacks of fabric stashed away (not shown here) that could be used for that and I probably still would not empty those boxes.

Here is to hoping that this could make a dent. The funny part in all of this was how difficult it was to actually chuck some stuff out...it pained me even with really small pieces to throw them out, always thinking...oh, I might use that! Well, doing all those foxes recently and also the Lemur quilt, I just have proven that you actually do not remember what you have unless it is right in front of you. I spent hours cutting out those small white background pieces for the two quilts from new white fabric when I could have just taken one of those pre-cut strips that I seem to have in abundance lying around.

Karin