Scrap Management Sewing

The heavy sewing production of the past couple of months resulted in a lot of leftover fabric. I try to deal with those leftovers while the fabric is still on the cutting table by slicing parts for future projects. For instance, much of the extra apron fabric morphed into potholders. What wasn’t big enough for potholders was cut into 5” squares for comforter tops. And the “strings” that were left after that went into the scrap bag.

The scrap bags are overflowing, though, and driving me batty, so I decided to spend a few hours dealing with them yesterday. I dumped them all onto the floor and sat and sorted them by length. The strings that were full widths of fabric were set aside in their own pile. Those are the ones I want to use last because their length makes them the most versatile. Using the shorter pieces, I finished the last four squares for the Scrapper’s Delight 2.0 quilt for our bed. We already have Scrapper’s Delight 1.0 on our bed, but it is only 72” x 72” and I wanted a larger version. The original required thirty-six 12” squares; version 2.0 required sixty-four 12” squares. I’ve been working on them as the scraps pile up. Now I can put the whole thing together and figure out how I want to quilt it. Tera helped me do the first one on her longarm. I may ask her if we can do the second one that way, too.

I still had a supply of short strings, though, so Vittorio and I started Yet Another Candy Coated Quilt.

Both the Scrapper'‘s Delight and Candy Coated are from Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. I love that book. I think this is the fourth Candy Coated that I’ve made, simply because it’s such a great pattern for using up scraps. It’s made up of rows of varying heights, anywhere from 3” to 10-1/2”.

I started with the shortest pieces, seaming them together on their long sides to make a strip about 24” long. That strip was trimmed to the appropriate width and then the sections sewn together to make a row approximately 72” long. Out of those short scraps, I was able to get a 3” row, a 4-1/2” row, and part of another 4-1/2” row. At that point, I switched gears and pulled out the longer strips that were approximately 20” long. After sewing those together and trimming them, I was able to cut them into sections for a 10-1/2” row and and an 8” row:

This is good mindless sewing. You just sew strips together without regard for what fabrics are next to each other. It’s scrappy, yes, but somehow it all comes out in the wash looking fine.

I may not get an entire Candy Coated 4.0 out of the current scrap supply, but that’s okay. These completed rows are easier to store than a bag of messy scraps. I also have smaller scrap bags of light-colored scraps—what are known as “low volume” fabrics—and a bag of white and cream scraps. I have this desire to make a quilt from the white and cream scraps, which is incredibly impractical but keeps nagging at my creative subconscious.

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Transcription work has been light to nonexistent this week. That was not unexpected. I did all my errand-running yesterday—and got to chat with Tera for a few minutes at Costco—because we are supposed to get a winter storm this afternoon and it could be a messy one. Current forecasts are for 6-12”—two feet over the passes, which means we may get more than a foot at our elevation—and 40 mph winds. (Oh yay.) The bigger worry is the possibility of freezing rain. All of the people who think that four-wheel drive makes them invincible are going to get a physics lesson on what happens when the coefficient of friction goes to zero.

My mother-in-law sent some 13-bean soup mix, so I boiled down the ham bone from our Christmas ham and made a pot of soup. That will just simmer all day and be our dinner tonight. Hopefully the husband will not have to spend New Year’s Eve cutting up downed trees and dealing with car accidents.