More Fun with Scraps

When I cleaned up the sewing room last week one of the items uncovered was a heap of scrappy 4-patches I’d made a while back. These came about because I’d cut some 2.5″ WoF strips of Kona “bone” for something, then decided not to use it. This roughly coincided with a spurt of trimming various smallish scraps to tidy 2.5″ squares. I paired up squares in sets of two, and strip-pieced them to the bone strips, then cut, pressed, and seamed to make 4-patches. Turns out, when I got around to counting, that I’d made a lot of them: 72.

I could have just dumped them into yet another gallon-sized ziplock baggie and tossed that into the “random half-made crap” bin which holds* all my baggies of stuff that is sort of assembled into something, but not at a state that merits WIP status.

* barely, it’s close to overflowing

Instead, I decided to put the 4-patches to quickie use. Separated into “lighter” and “darker” piles, the count came out about even, so I made two more baby quilt centers lickety-split as soon as my machine was back in service:

Frankly, against the stark white of my flannel design wall, Kona “bone” looks rather dingy (as it does here, too, against the default white page background. I added narrow solid frames, but that didn’t help much.

I always think my stash is ginormous, until I “shop” it and come up empty, at which point it seems meager and poorly developed. Turns out I have nothing (other than scraps) that looks particularly interesting when paired with “bone.” I thought a nice batik might do the trick, so headed out to the LQS with the best batik selection and found a couple of beauties within minutes of walking in the door. I only wish I’d bought more than a yard of each, because I only have little bits left after cutting these nice fat borders:

I think this one looks like artichokes. It is taking all my willpower to resist running back to the shop to get another yard or two and see if it comes in other colors.

And this one grabbed me immediately. I hadn’t planned to go so dark with something baby sized (both are now 37″x45″), but this gorgeous blue and brown bubbly made that decision for me:

Framed checkerboards are a long way from the most interesting designs I’ve ever done, but I like the challenge of throwing such a mish-mash of prints and colors together and making it work.

Backing and bindings for both are as yet unknown, and I don’t know when I’ll get around to quilting them. It’s tempting to just plug on through and get them done, but there’s a certain New York Beauty all backed and basted and ready to go that I’m eager to get to. And then there’s the One Block Wonder that’s my February “Finish-Along” project, and it’s already almost the middle of the month, so these new tops will have to hang out in the WIP bin for a while.

Tagged as: batiks, scrap quilts