When I have had a few minutes, I have enjoyed piecing on the 2-inch scrap quilt that I started at our guild retreat. As a reminder, this is how it looks…..

I designed the pattern to use up all of my 2-inch scraps. What I didn’t think about is that it takes almost as many WHITE scraps as it does colors!!

AND….I don’t HAVE that many white scraps!

But then fate intervened!!

I was meeting two women at our guild charity bee that meets on Wednesday mornings. We were trading quilts so that they could be dropped off for an upcoming show. We were doing this trading in the parking lot in front of the building.

While talking, a couple drove up and asked if we were quilters? We heartily answered in the affirmative.

He continued “well we have some fabric for you”!!

He proceeded to open the trunk of his car and extract several boxes of goodies that were bound for the charity bee. We thanked them profusely and carried our treasures into the room filled with quilters happily making quilts for various charities.

As you might expect, the boxes were thrown open as everyone started ooing over the stash.

Then it happened…..

Ellen (our fearless leader) pulled out this bag…..

LOOK at all of those white squares….many 4-inches!!

Ellen saw my raised eyebrows and excited expression and asked me if I wanted them..

OH MY….YES!!

As soon as I got home, I was in my studio, cutting the big squares into smaller squares.

I probably got carried away and cut too many which means that I will have WHITE 2-inch squares leftover!!

But, now I am ready to being piecing in earnest!!

Isn’t it wonderful when FATE steps in?

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If you have been reading, you know that I have been making 6-inch scrap blocks using MOSTLY 1.5-inch scraps.

When I had cleared out much of my 1.5-inch scrap drawer, I decided that it was time to figure out a layout.

I had pieced approximately 45 blue blocks (that seems to be most used color), 9 pink blocks, 6 purple blocks, 8 green blocks and 4 BRIGHT yellow blocks.

I decided on a 7×9 layout and started throwing blocks up on the wall.

First I tried diagonal stripes…..

NOT my favorite.

Then I tried random…..

Definitely not.

Next I tried a more symmetrical layout with 3 of the yellow blocks in the center….

It wasn’t perfect but it would do!!

BUT, I had 11 blue block leftover and I was NOT going to let that happen.

What would happen if I cut those blocks in half and used them in a border….

There weren’t enough to go all the way around, but what if I placed them toward each of the corners!!

I liked how it looked and, more importantly, there was only 1 blue block left!!

You may also notice that I am auditioning border colors at this point.

One block left….what to do??

I did need a corner block, so what if I cut the remaining block into quarters and used them in the corner. But which direction…..

Facing out or facing in…..

You might also notice that I decided on and added a 2-inch yellow border!!

Next was to decide on something to fill in the blank spaces on the border. And remember that I had one yellow block left over.

So, it seemed that the only solution was to un-piece that yellow block and piece one more strip set so that I could fill in both the top and bottom….

Hooray….the top is finished!!

If you come back tomorrow, you will see the first stage of quilting!!

Now, is this my favorite quilt ever??

Not so much, but I love that I was able to use so many of my scraps and I see it as a great first finish in my “Summer of the Scrap”.

SEE YOU TOMORROW!!

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As I wrote about on the weekend, I am enjoying finishing the piecing on my quilt that has been dubbed the “Taxing Scrap”.

But, I had something happen that worried me, and I bet you have had the same worry.

As I was merrily piecing my couplets, I came across a stack of fabrics that were EXACTLY the same……

What was I going to do??

I didn’t want them to all be together.

I didn’t want them to stick out in the design.

This problem is one of the reasons that I suggest you find smaller sections of each big block and piece ALL of them first…..before you EVER finish a complete block!!

I am really bad about this because I get impatient….

…..and want to see what the final block is going to look like.

That often gets me into trouble!!

But since I was sewing ALL of the couplets before I started sewing the 4-patches, it worked out perfectly in this case.

I took each of those squares and matched it up with a different fabric…..

When you look at them like this, you DEFINITELY see the identical fabrics….

When you look at them like this, they are not as prominent….

….and when you see them in the finished blocks….

I dare you to find all of them!!

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Yesterday I talked about breaking down scrap blocks into smaller components, starting with 2-patches…..or “couplets” as I called them.

The next step was to turn those 2-patches into 4-patches.

When I first started, I had all of the 2-patches in a pile by my sewing machine. I would pick up one and then try to figure out which one I wanted to attach it to.

And then when I made a decision, often the seam allowances wouldn’t be nesting…..

….which meant that I either had to fix the seam allowances or change to a different combination of 2-patches.

YIKES…..this was taking forever!!!

So I decided to try something else.

Instead, I stacked up two sets of couplets, one with the seam allowance facing one direction and the other facing the other way…..something like this…..

So now it was super easy for me to make a 4-patch.

Just pick up one couplet from one pile and one from the other and sew them together.

The seams magically nested…..

….making piecing and pressing a breeze.

And, unless the same two fabrics ended up together, I never even thought about which ones to put together. If they were next in the pile, they were sewn together.

This brings me to Scrapping Principle #3. And yes I know that I haven’t talked about #2 yet but I will on Tuesday…..

So now I have 4-patches to work with…..

I took 9 of these pieced portions and turn them into a 6-inch block, starting by sewing three 4-patches together….

….and then sewing the three strips together to make the blocks…..

I was trying to make at least 8 blocks from the green squares so needed to add some other patches to make them big enough. I pulled out my 2.5-inch scraps and laid out a set of green ones….

Next, I mixed the 4-patches and the 2.5-inch squares to make more blocks in a 9-patch format….

And before I knew it, I had all of the green squares sewn into 6-inch blocks…..

I also pieced the purple squares into 6-inch blocks and finally, the few yellow squares together to form 4 blocks.

NOW…..it is finally time to figure out a layout.

Come back on Thursday and we will get the top finished!!!

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