Sunday, October 8, 2017

Scrap, scrap, scrappin' along


After finishing up several gift quilts lately, I decided to just play in my scraps for a while. My blue/aqua box of scrap strips was overflowing, so that was a good place to start. I was inspired by a couple quilts I saw on Pinterest to make some 60 degree string triangles.


I raided my "light neutrals" scrap box, too, and made strip sets going from light to dark. Each set is about 9" wide and about 40-45". I had a few single pieces that were WOF, but most of the strips were pieced end to end in similar color and value as you can see. 


I read somewhere that your strip piecing will stay much straighter if you press the seams open instead of to one side. That was definitely true with these random, leftover scrap strips. Here's two sewn together. Note that big bow in the piecing.


After setting the seam then pressing it open, the bow completely disappeared. Magic, huh? Please excuse my well-used and rather scorched ironing board cover. I love that bird print, but it needs to be retired soon. 



After making the strip sets, I trimmed them all to 8.5" width and started cutting triangles. 8.5" is the maximum size I can cut with this ruler. I'm lazy, and wanted to cut and piece as few triangles as possible. Because the sets ended up all chopped up, having pieced strips was no big deal. You can see in this photo that half the triangles have a dark base, and half have a light base. I also ended up with those right angle triangle end pieces, which I saved.


I tried to keep the true blues and the aquas in separate strip sets, and ended up with four distinct sets of triangles. Completely by accident, the aqua strips had less white/cream, so they read as more uniformly colored than the true blues and the true blues have a more distinct pattern of light and dark.


I wanted to sash between each of the four sections and decided to go bold. GOLD bold! I've admired a number of scrappy quilts lately that have very patterned, brightly colored backgrounds. I pulled out an oddball dark yellow/gold with a red and blue paisley motif, and it spoke to me. It whispered, "Yo, Louise, it's a completely scrappy quilt! That's like completely free fabric right there, so try something new, why doncha? Who cares that might look like a circus tent when you're done? Don't be such a wuss. What have you got to lose?" Not exactly reassuring words, but when the fabric speaks, you gotta listen.


Here is that gold at the end of two rows, filling in the space at the end of the triangles. I only had a yard of it, so my sashing and borders needed to be skinny minnie to make it work. 


And here's the finished flimsy. The gold is kinda weird, but a good weird, I think. The triangles have a nice 3-D effect. There are lot of fun bits of fabric in there: cats, butterflies, hearts, birds and fish to name a few. It's pretty big for me, about 60"x70", which makes a nice couch or lap quilt size. Still, a bit more width in the sashing would have been nice.

Have you ever used a really off the wall fabric for background or sashing? Did you hem and haw about it first, or dive right in? Did it whisper to you, and if so, did it have a New Jersey accent? Weird.

14 comments:

  1. Wow! Beautiful effect from scraps, it looks planned!

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  2. The 3-d effect is really the amazing result, love it. I did one really weird wide border. On my Rainbow Scrap Challenge 16-patch quilt I needed a wide border, so I used turquoise with bright bananas all over it. The backing was fleece with Monkeys and bananas. It really worked, but I took quite a chance. I like your yellow choice. It is a true contrast with the blues and aqua, so that is an ideal choice color-wise. Good going!

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  3. Oh, it's fabulous! The "wild" gold really works. I tend to be conservative in my background and sashing choices, but one day I hope to be a bit more daring!

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  4. I love the layout so you really see the triangles depth, they just look like they are popping off the quilt.

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  5. The gold is a fabulous choice to see the blues off. Love the 3-D effect and great job with the blending of values.

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  6. Wonderful in every way! Bold was definitely the way to go -- and I like the skinnie minnie sashing strips. And -when my fabric speaks, I try really hard to play along (grin).

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  7. This quilt is gorgeous, Louise! Wow! I really, really like it! I can't say I've ever heard fabric talking in a New Jersey accent. Is that what you heard? Hee! Hee!

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  8. WOW!!! I was amazed at how beautiful all these scrappy blues turned out!! How fun!

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  9. love that effect from the triangles and a great way to use up scraps..... yup the gold works well....
    Hugz

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  10. Very nice! No, I haven't been that adventurous! But I have been also stimming on my scraps. My baskets are overflowing, too, but with littler pieces, so I've been making zippered pouches. Finally came up for air from a busy, concentrated couple of days.

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  11. Wow! I have to wonder how surprising the design was for you--or did you have some inkling of the end result? I'm not as adventurous, but you have such an eye for color. I love how the gold looks with the blues--especially that it has the turquoise in it to call to the other colors. I've always been unsure how to make strips when WOF isn't enough. Your scrappy approach is inspiring.

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  12. As everyone is saying WOW!! This is another where I went 'oh' as I saw the triangles become cubes with such depth. New Jersey accent (eck-sent..or is that the Midwest twang I hear?) I like what you did, especially when it was all 'for free' lol. Who knew on the pressing seams open to say good-bye to the bow! Will remember that.

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  13. I really enjoyed this post and how all the purging created such glorious quilt tops! I'm from NJ, but purged my NJ accent except when I am really mad about something.You can take the girl out of New Jersey, but.....

    The thing that made my chuckle was subscraps. It reminded me of when I was in physical therapy for my frozen shoulder and the PT folks would sometimes shorten the name of the subscapularis muscle to subscap. If anyone wants to give a quilt to a physical therapist, maybe they would enjoy your subscraps!

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