Wednesday, May 31, 2017

First Top From Scrap Bin Challenge Finished

I finished my first top from the scrap bin today! When I started I just had a few ideas. I knew I wanted to make stars. Then I decided to use 4 patches in the alternate parts of the block. I then decided to sketch it all out. I really liked the drawing so I kept going with the idea. The star points are all brown. When I was trying to find enough brown is when I decided to sort thru the entire bin and separate by color. What a huge difference that made. I will continue to keep scraps by color from now on as it saves so much time and energy when you do not have to keep going thru the pile over and over looking for those little pieces of a particular color.


So this is the bin that this lovely top was made from. Yes it is possible to make beautiful things from random scraps. In this case I used muslin as a background. I did buy muslin yardage for the alternate squares and the border but did so after finding and using muslin for the star pieces. I then decided on a plain background which will be a place to do any kind of fancy quilting I want to.
This morning when I pulled out the top without the borders I was second guessing myself and was thinking this is not going to be a pretty quilt after all. Then I attached the first plain border and the checkerboard border and like it much better. I was wondering if I should add the second plain border and am glad that I did. When I hung this up between two trees next to my RV and stood back I knew that I had made the right choices!
This is what we do on weekends.................we took the motorcycle out on Saturday and saw Paulina Lakes in Newberry Crater. What a great ride. We went from the hot desert to the snow.

This is Fort Rock. It is a giant ring made of lava that once stood 500 feet tall but is only about 300 feet today. It is a out of the way sight to go see and was well worth the trip.



Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Tri-Recs


I have been busy with my scrap bin challenge. Sorting fabrics by colors sure has made a huge difference. Above you can see what I am working on as my second quilt from my 18 gallon bin. But lets back up. How did I get there:

I sorted all the fabric by color and put each color in separate bags. Above is all the blue fabric.

So the bag got upended and the sorting will begin.
First I did a sort. Some things are sorted by shape, some by type of fabric like applique or solids.


The piles look so much neater after pressing.

Then the fun began with cutting. Above is a sample of the blue fabric after cutting. I have two sizes of squares. Two sizes of large triangles with the Tri-Recs tool, and just one size for the long skinny Tri-Recs tool.

So finally after cutting Tri-Recs out of the green, blue and purple fabrics I have a really nice assortment for a quilt with the cool colors. I cut these with a loose plan. This project was planned with two things, shape and color.

So now the fun begins with the little triangles. These will add some sparkle with little pops of color to the quilt. It was really fun to play with combinations of these. I pulled all the ones that have three of the same fabric and then chose a contrasting triangle to go the center. I played with them till I was happy with them. The was quite some rearranging. After that I paired the skinny triangles . With those I chose similar colors to make a pair.


Then I had fun arranging the triangles. They looked really nice.......so I took a photo. Looking at a photo really helps you see how something looks. Humm..................ok but.................how about I make larger shapes...............like diamonds out of similar colors.
Winner!!!! This is not the final arrangement. I still  need to play with this quite a bit, but at least I have a definite plan.

Friday, May 19, 2017

Update On The Scraps

 Finally I have something to show for all my sorting, cutting, planning, sewing and pressing! That is a neat stack of 13 blocks and 4 sides of the pieced part of the border. Who knew that all this was hiding out in that scrap bin in the photo below.
 After a week of work it is pretty rewarding to see my efforts bear some real blocks. A few days ago I switched gears and went thru the entire pile and sorted everything into categories. One category was color. Each category was put in Walmart bas so if I want green I just dump out the green bag. All the bags store nicely in the bin as well. There were other categories as well like small blocks, non cotton stuff, fabric for applique projects and I even found two zippers which I will use in bags.
 Once things were sorted I was able to go thru bags and get a nice balance of color for the scrappy star blocks. I decided that using one color for the star points would look better. I settled on brown. I also cut tons of 2 1/2 inch squares. Having colors sorted really made that so much easier.


 My little featherweight got a great workout. I have set up in the tiny RV bedroom on a TV tray table. I can't have the iron on if the machine is on........or the coffee maker either so I have to only have one thing plugged in at a time. I just make it work.
Now I need to set this project aside till I get some muslin for the alternate blocKS and strips on each side of the checkerboard border. I am pretty excited about the next project which is green, purple and maybe blue made with the two shapes of the Tri-Recs ruler.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Scrap Bin Challenge

 Yep that is an 18 gallon keeper bin and it was stuffed pretty full. The reason for the tight stuffing is because this is one of several bins. When I think about it though there were lots of quilts made to generate all these scraps.
 Each fabric by itself is nice when they are pulled from the pile, pressed and cut into one of the shapes I am working with.
 This group will have 16 x 2 1/2 inch strips cut for another Scrappy Trips Around The World. A tutorial can be found on Bonnie Hunter's website of free quilt patterns.
 Ahhhh......finally something made out of all that mess. A week ago the fabric in these blocks were part of that bin. Now they are a nice stack of 4 squares and triangle blocks made with the Tri-Rec ruler set.
Here is a drawing of the quilt these will be part of. I need to buy muslin for plain blocks and the two strips on each side of the pieced border. I only drew the star in one of the blocks, but all the pieced blocks will have star points like the one in the upper left. I plan to see how many quilts I can generate from this bin. Every time I sort and cut I am comming up with more ideas. So I leave you with a question......what's hiding in your scrap bin?

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Another Crazy Quilt Class

 I am taking another online Crazy quilt class with Kathy Shaw. It is the IC-103. We are making motifs in this class. The first motif above is a tree with a twisted trunk. What an awesome technique. The second tree below was made by drawing a tree and making it with stitches.
 The assignment below was to create a spider in a web that was attached to a vine or branches. This one took a bit of time to create, but it was a lot of fun.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Challenge

Sorry no glitzy photos in this post. This is my challenge for the next two months.......to see how many of this overflowing bin of scraps I can cut up and sew into blocks for several different quilt projects. My scrap bin became two bins and then multiple bins. Totally out of control! It is time to get rid of them or make something out of them and I choose the latter.
Below are some of the specialty rules I am gonna be using. Yesterday I thought I was cutting forever and have quite a few various shapes cut but as you can imagine I did not make a dent in the bin.....nope not even close. Then again: How do you eat an elephant...................one bite at a time.