Lately I’ve been working on a Project Which Cannot Be Discussed with Some Crackpots. It involves scraps, so I’ve been searching through my (quite large!) collection of scraps to find what I want for this Project. I had already sorted my scraps by color and put each color in its own ziploc bag (which I think is pretty impressive!), so there was some organization in there, but the box containing all the bags of scraps was bursting at the seams. I felt a need to DO SOMETHING about all the scraps – ideally, to do something with all the scraps. So, I looked through my old issues of Quiltmaker and got some books about scrap quilts from the library. I found that some scrap quilts are too scrappy for me – I need some degree of organization for it to look good to me. One that I liked was Chinese Coins, which you can see here. I also found a book about Nickel quilts (quilts from 5″ squares) which had some interesting patterns. So, I decided to go through my scraps and impose some order. I’m working on cutting my scraps into 5″ squares, 5″ by 2.5″ rectangles, and 2.5″ squares. If it’s smaller than a 2.5″ square, I’m throwing it out! (Well, most of the time…) I’m a little surprised that I’m enjoying cutting up the scraps so much – finding fabric from previous quilts I’ve made is a little like catching up with an old friend! I don’t plan to do much more than that just yet – I’ve got the two baby quilts to finish, and I heard yesterday at the playground that one of the moms had gone into labor that day, so I’d better get going!
Wow, are you ambitious! I like that Chinese Coins quilt, too. I thing the red sashing and binding and the blue border bring a nice order to the quilt. You could use a lot of little pieces in that quilt.
I understand about enjoying seeing the scraps again. It’s like sorting beads. Seeing all of them fun for me, and I think of new ways to use different beads together.