Out of the Depths of the Scrap Piles

Two Donation Quilt Tops

Both are 40 x 60

As soon as I find a backing and as soon as I piece together some batting (aka Frankenbatt) I'll get them quilted and sent off to either Quilts Beyond Borders or Wrap-A-Smile. 

The blue one was pieced together from orphan blocks.  I thought the blocks in the middle were  Practical Orchard but I really don't remember. They are from a swap from long, long, long ago...too long ago.  Anyway, I was disappointed with a lot of the blocks I received. They are nine inch blocks and most of the points weren't perfect (after I worked so hard to make mine perfect) and some of the seams didn't even match right.  And if you look closely you can see one block that has the HST sewn the wrong way. Okay, so everyone needs to learn how to sew at some time or other so I let it go and threw the blocks I didn't like into a box. Well, actually I threw the ones I did like in there too but most of those were my own blocks.  (And I'm not really a picky person, believe me).    Long story short...I'm trying to use up everything in my sewing room because it's a mess with all of these parts and pieces, scrap bags and orphans laying around. And although I don't mind a good fabric mess or pile or two...I'm going to be admitted to an asylum one of these days by my family for hoarding if I don't get all my scraps under control soon.  Either that or a pile of boxes will fall on me and I'll be yelling "I've fallen and I can't get up" and no one will be around to hear me, see me and dig me out. 

I  also had a bunch of rail fence orphans in a box of blue orphans (left over from the rail fence and Dresden Plate/Fireworks Quilt of Valor I made earlier this year for my nephew) so decided to use those and the Impractical Orchards in a donation quilt I guess you could call Orchard Fence.  

Then remember this big garbage back of pale and very long strings cut from quilt backs that I showed back in November?  If not you can revisit the post (or not). 

To summarize...I was going to make another six point string star like the one I made earlier this year with bright long strings (that is currently on my bed) but make it with the pastel strings from that bag on a pink calico background.    Well, I sewed together enough scraps for my 248 star pieces (plus extras in case I misplace some, heaven forbid! ) and cut them out and am ready now for quilt top assembly but I didn't use the entire bag of scraps (and am now pondering what else I want to do with them). 

In the bottom of the said garbage bag of strings I found a couple of different little girl prints on several different pieces of fabric so fussy cut as many as I could into 6.5 inch pieces to use as block centers.  

And then I made 12 inch wonky log blocks from some more of the scraps in the bag plus some from the bag of pale shorter strings.  12 x 5 gave me the 60 inches I needed for length but in order to get the 40 inch width I cut twenty 1.5 inch x 12.5 inch pieces from scraps so I could use 4 in each row between blocks. I sneaked them in randomly between blocks so they kind of blended in with wonkiness of the blocks and didn't look like I used sashing.  

There is something rather satisfying about making something useful from an actual pile of this and that and other things. 

And I would consider this Improv Quilting

Did you know there is a monthly link for that? 

Ad Hoc Improv Quilting with Ann and Kaja