Tales From The Scrap Yard

On March 24 I met up for the first time with a fellow Stashbuster , Candra, who also lives in Iowa about 1.5 hours away from me. She had sent me an email asking if I wanted some scraps. Seriously?? I LOVE scraps. Candra even offered to deliver but a friend went with me and we drove west to meet her at a quilt shop and then we went to lunch. I had a delightful visit with Candra and stuffed the back of my friend's car with several bags of Candra's scraps. I couldn't wait to get home to the Scrap Yard and sort through them. I kind of analyzed all of the bags of the scraps first in order to figure out the best way to sort through them. In the past I used to sort through scraps I received and throw them into bins I stored by scrap width. But I emptied most of those scrap bins last year.  I sorted Candra's scraps into bags by color and then within those bags I sorted by fabric width. I also ended up with a bag of orphans and another of oddly shaped scraps because I think Candra made a lot of masks and surgical caps in the past year. There was also a plastic jar of bonus triangles not yet sewn together. 

When all was sorted I started with the bag of green scraps. I thought it would be fun to document what all will be made from this bag of scraps. My goal is to make donation quilts roughly of the size 40 x 60. 

First I took out the biggest piece of yardage and put it in with my camping/wildlife themed fabrics. I also took out some 1.5 inch pieces with roses and put those with my rose themed scraps. 

Then I took out the pieces that were at least five inches in width. On the right hand side are some of my own scraps that are 5 inches wide. I decided to add those so I would have enough scraps to make some large Churn Dash blocks - real scrap eaters. 

I made twelve Churn Dash variation blocks that finish at 13.5 inches. 

I added a 3 inch border to the top and bottom with my scraps and ended up with a quilt 40.5 x 60. 

The next scraps that came out of the bag were a bunch of 1.5 inch width scraps...

...some 2.5 inch width scraps and some 5 inch scraps left over from making Churn Dash blocks that I cut into 5 inch squares. 

I first framed the five inch squares with 1.5 x 5 inch  and 1.5 x 7 inch scraps...

...and then added a frame of 2.5 inch width scraps. I made 24 blocks that finished at 10.5 inches. 

In a 4 x 6 layout the quilt ended up 42 x 63 inches.

So...I made a mistake when I cut the 1.5 inch scraps for that previous quilt. I was thinking my center square was 4.5 inches instead of 5 inches so I cut some lengths at 6.5 inches instead of 7 inches. So, I decided to make another quilt to use those 6.5 inch pieces. Along with the 6.5 lengths of 1.5 inch width of scraps I found some 4.5 inch width of scraps in the green Candra scrap bag and cut those into 4.5 x 6.5 inch pieces. And in the brown bag of Candra scraps I remembered there were a whole lot of brown 1.5 inch strips. I cut those into 6.5 inch lengths. 

Then I made 32 blocks that consisted of four green strips bordered by two brown strips and I made 31 blocks that consisted of a 4.5 x 6.5 inch scrap bordered by two brown strips. 

I alternated blocks in a 7 x 9 layout and ended up with a little quilt 42 x 54. 

So, so far that makes 3 little green quilts from a grocery bag of scraps. But wait! There's still more green scraps in the bag. I'm not going to move on to another color until the green bag is empty so there will be more tales from the Scrap Yard coming soon!

Oh, Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun than Housework