Last night I got home from work late. I had intended to make more scrappy Liberty blocks to catch up with Nicky, my Scraptastic Tuesday partner from Mrs. Sew and Sow, but as I walked into my sewing room I looked at the blocks that I had arranged on my design wall. Those blocks are the ones I made during the Decipher Your Quilt series and I needed to join them into a quilt so I would have some photos for a post about how to do that.
It's harder to see as I had to seriously lighten the photo given that it's now dark after dinner, but I had made these blocks with low volume scrappy backgrounds. My original plan was vague, maybe I would join them using the math - they all are sized to go together. But I was feeling like trying out something more scrappy.
So I picked up some low volume scraps that were handy on my cutting table and started sticking them up on the wall. I've seen many of these quilts with blocks and a bunch of random low volume pieces and I love them. Using only the light low volume pieces in the background is a way to make very scrappy quilts that are far less overwhelming than the brightly coloured similar ones. So I decided to give it a go and started piecing the puzzle together.
As the night wore on, I had scraps piled all over the place, and the quilt was growing. I made a rule for myself, I had to find the low volume piece somewhere already as a cut bit - I did not pull any fabric off a shelf and cut a piece for this quilt - which really forced me to use only the messy scrap mountain, not the folded scrap pieces.
This project totally benefited from my lack of scrap organization. I just kept pulling out more possible pieces of every possible size. If I had already cut and organized those scraps into uniform sizes this quilt would not have happened because I needed every possible size piece and plenty of larger ones too. However, I did end up with scraps everywhere as a result.
This morning I am wondering if I should just sort my scraps by volume, low, medium, high (dark), and solids. Maybe separating them also by neutrals, warms and cool colours? Maybe I don't have to embark on one of the popular and efficient scrap cutting and storage approaches after all but instead just get some accessible bins for the scrap mountain?
Here is my quilt top at the end of my sewing night. I stayed up far later than usual and again this photo is heavily edited to brighten it up. I think it is a success. I am not sure if I will trim the bottom or add more bits to it and also add to the right side or maybe all sides - I need to figure out the best overall size for this quilt. I will share my process for fitting the scraps and blocks together in the next Decipher Your Quilt post.
This was a fun project. It is full of pieces from other projects which I was reminded of with each scrap added. It was low stress, unplanned and improv. I highly recommend it, with or without a few traditional blocks added in.
I see Nicky has made even more blocks on her scrappy sampler - she is including all the instructions so we can make one too, do check out her progress. I will be pulling out my Liberty scraps to catch up to her this week.
Next week is already the second Tuesday of the month. Nicky and I will round up some more sponsors, and we hope you will be joining our link then with a post about a scrappy project - in progress or finished, or about using, organizing or dealing with your own scraps. We are going to leave that link up open for only one week from now on, and we sure hope you will be joining us - last month was great fun.
Best,
Leanne
