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Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Scrappy Strings Galore and NTT

Hey friends!  Welcome to another Needle and Thread Thursday.  This week, I broke one of the very few rules I have for scrap sewing, and have deeply regretted it.  

When I teach scrappy improv classes, I always ask students to bring one full gallon-sized bag of scraps, and NO MORE.  I know, I know.  It's so tempting to lay them all out at once.  And more choices means easier sewing, right?.  Wrong!  In this case, more is not more.  More scraps on the table just means more digging for the next piece to sew.  It also means that all of that digging gets the scraps completely mixed up into one jumbled pile where you can't find anything, and lots get buried on the bottom.  Even though this isn't really scrappy improv, all of this holds true even for the most experienced scrap sewist.  

Alas, this week has been one of digging, and digging...and more digging.  That being said, though I feel like I had to arm-wrestle these scraps into something I like, I do actually think the finished quilt top is pretty fun.  

To make these blocks, I sewed log cabin blocks with various width strings, as well as varying center pieces (most centers actually rectangles and not squares).  I trimmed them to 13" square, cut them into quarters, and then shuffled them.  The result is wonderfully loud and scrappy with just enough order.  The finished top measures 60" x 72".

After all that sewing, you'd think I put a massive dent in my scraps, and that would also be wrong.  Sure, there are noticeably fewer scraps than when I started, but here's how it looks now (after I spent awhile resorting)-

I'm just about out of the longest strings needed to make more of these scrappy log cabins, or I would have made this quilt larger.  I'm planning to sew up some of these to add to the back, and then I'll figure out the rest.  One thing's for certain- these aren't going back into my scrap jars!  They're getting used up somehow- but in smaller, more manageable chunks.

Okay, y'all.  Before we party, let's check out some of last week's highlights.  This beauty is from Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl-


Quilting Gail shared this cute little mini.  Look at all of those different quilting motifs in each triangle!

And finally, I'm loving all of the scrappy goodness in this quilt from Gretchen's Little Corner-


Okay, it's time to get our party on!

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5 comments:

  1. Now you need to make a scrappy potato chip quilt. Just google the title, there are lots of variations! Happy stitching!

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  2. Gorgeous scrappy quilt, Kelly! I look forward to seeing what the rest of the scraps become!

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  3. Great tip about having too much to sort through; I find the same is true when I'm doing improv (which is about as scrappy as I get). :) Thank you for sharing my quilt!

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  4. Hi Kelly, thanks so much for sharing your process with us. I love the idea of cutting those blocks up to rearrange them and lets face it, that's easier to do when they are scrappy! Have fun figuring out how to use up those remaining scraps! Your flimsy looks great!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks so much for your comment and for visiting! I read and appreciate every single comment, and I reply to each one as soon as I can. If you don't hear back from me, you might be a no-reply blogger. :)

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