Dealing With The Scraps

Lynn Dykstra, of Kleine Meisje Quilts, recently posted a finished quilt called Ladder. It's bold and graphic and the colours are wonderful. Mereth pointed out that it would be a great pattern to use up small scraps, and she made some blocks to demonstrate. I resisted for all of a day, and then completely caved, digging scraps out of the far reaches of my stash cupboards.

The blocks are super simple, and take no time at all to sew up; in a flash I had dozens of blocks on the design wall, I'd exhausted most of the real scraps and was even cutting strips from larger pieces of fabric to include.

I made some half blocks, because I didn't have enough to make a whole block and I wanted to use every last bit. I don't know if I'll use them in this quilt, so they may just be the start of another project. 

They may end up in the backing of this quilt though, so I'm not making any decisions about them just yet.

Mine is going to be more subdued than Lynn's, or Mereth's, because I just don't have those bright intensely coloured fabrics. I seem to be leaning towards the mid greens and golds. I'm not using a lot of solids either, again because I don't have them in my scrap stash. I even included a few metallic prints that were lurking in a scrap bag; it was time to either use them or throw them out. 

I'm aiming for 90 blocks, and I have 70 already. Mereth has kitted hers, packing away the cut pieces in a beautiful tin. I wasn't patient enough for that, I wanted to see straight away if the colours and fabrics were going to work. Now that I've made so many I may as well just push through and finish it. Bur I think I'll keep cutting the pieces for an ongoing scrap management effort. It has certainly cleared out the scraps that were hanging on racks all over the sewing room.