Crumb Squares

Here they are - all stitched together and cut to 3" (unfinished) squares.  And did it have the desired effect on my scraps? 

This is all that's left in the little drawer which holds the sub-two inch pieces

and here's the scrapbasket/strip bag.  I think we're looking good. Though not for long, I'm sure!

All the little scraps

So, what happens to all those tiny scraps - the ones which are too small to be cut into squares? 

Well, I stitch them together until they ARE large enough to do something with. 

Sometimes I use these bits as enders and leaders and sometimes I just spend some time stitching them together. 

This time around, I mined my strip bag for all the short strips which would be hard to use in other sorts of projects...

...and will make sure to incorporate those into the crumb blocks as well, as they take shape.

The massive (for me) de-scrapping

The scrap basket being full several weeks ago, it was time to embark on a descrapping - or if not precisely de-scrapping, at least a scrap rationalisation.

I do my scraps by size - I start with the bigger pieces and work down, and I do it a little at a time to make it less tedious. First step is to cut squares from anything larger than 6.5" - these 6.5" squares go in an old cigar box, which I haven't photographed, and are good blocks for setting alternately with pieced 6.5" blocks, for example. I don't cut 6" or 5.5" blocks - the rest of my sizes are 5" or smaller. Above, the right hand stack is the 6.5" and the left hand stack is the 5" squares - what's in the basket is what's left after going through for those two sizes.

Next step, 4.5" squares...

Then 4" squares...

Then 3.5" squares (you can see the contents of the basket getting less and less each time)...

Down to 3" squares in the above photo.

Lots of 2.5" squares (two stacks)

...and even more 2" squares (again, two stacks) - as you can see, the basket is empty.  Things smaller than 2" square (but still wider than about an inch - I don't save anything much below 2x1, and sometimes not even those) have their own little drawer.

Here are my scrap drawers - when one of them begins to fill up, then it's time to do some sort of scrappy project!

Postcard Wall Hanging: Early Summer

I'm trying to remember to change the cards in the wallhanging more often, so I can display more of the cards that I own from my many past trades...  This one was done a week or two ago, and has a kind of purple/green theme to it.  I'll probably get out my brighter/sunnier cards for later in the summer if I remember, that is!  Here are some of the cards featured:

Block Set Update

After the recent additions and subtractions, here's the state of my stash of block sets. Yeah, there's still quite a lot of stuff. But it's different!

Cross Stitch Update

Making progress on this Three Little Words piece - the colour is truer on the top on. Not much left to do on it, will probably finish it off this week.

The End of the Wonky Fours

..that's it - all the wonky four patches I made earlier put together into tops, or top centres. Of course, there are some top centres which still need borders on, but at least that's one fewer stack of blocks hanging about!

Almost the end...

...of the wonky double four patches - I have about this many blocks left to put into a top, and then that's the end of the stash of those blocks... finally!

Hawaiian Dreams

A new project, featuring some (a lot, I hope) of my remaining Hawaiian shirt fabric stash. I'm using one of my favourite patterns - Peaches and Dreams - and mixing the shirt fabrics (which are predominantly blue) in with tonals in a variety of colours to liven it all up. There are a lot more blocks to make, because I want to make this bed sized (for my bed)...

Here's one potential block layout...

and here's another.

This is my box of shirt fabrics when I started, and below, partway through the cutting - a few pieces I have used up entirely, but those folded on the left below are shirts where even though I've cut pieces for this project, there will be some left. The ones stack to the right, I haven't cut into yet for this project.

And of course, some scraps to add into the scrap basket and bag!

Mr Hawaii

Those of you who have been reading here for a while will know that when my dad died in 2007, my stepmom gave me all of his Hawaiian shirts, with the request that I make a quilt from them for her, and one for her mother (who knew my dad and spent a lot of time with him). My dad was not a small man - 6'3" and broad - so there was a lot of material in the 20+ shirts I took home to England with me (top right hand photo shows the shirts).  I made a quilt for her, one for my step-gran, one for my brother (these three are the right hand one of the top two small ones at the left, and the two below that on the left side of this collage), one for myself (bottom right - it took until this past year to get this one quilted, and it's still not got binding on it, but that's another issue!), and one for a good friend of mine who knew my dad (top left small photo). I also  made two baby quilt tops - one of which went to Linus and one of which is sitting in my house (middle and bottom middle) - and a larger top, which also went to Linus (top middle).  And I still have fabric!  

Today would have been my dad's 73rd birthday, so I thought it was a good day to show this Hawaiian shirt legacy...

ATC Friday

These cards were all made for a swap - one of the kind where the players pick their own themes. This group was a "difficult" themes group - so I had a tarot deck card, a John Cusack APC, Steampunk Nursery Rhymes and a Michael Rooker card. Will show my own when I get them back - they'll be Things with Wings (which don't normally have them).

Black and Tan

Put these blocks together into a top (or a centre of a top) - now to find something to use as a border...

Cross Stitch Update

Finished this one off this week (as I got the missing darker pink colour in the post) - colour is truer in the bottom photo - I should never take photos indoors at night, clearly.

Also worked a little on this - the "before" photo is not the most recent photo of the centre part, but it's the most recent one I have showing the border, which is where the work I did took place. 

And finally, I started on this, which is the second of the Three Little Words series of which the top piece is the first. I do like stitching words!

Purple Scraps

Here's what the scrap basket and strip bag look like now - with all that purple in them - time to get to work on these soon, I think!

These are all the additions to the basket & bag during the purple projects.  Ends of strips, a couple of charms I didn't use, some pale strips I cut then decided not to use, etc...

Purple III

...and here they are, bordered. I still have a little bit of purple left, but I don't feel back about putting these pieces back into stash - they'll come in handy for something in future, almost certainly a Linus project anyway, and if not, I shan't feel guilty about it, given the amount of fabric I've used in Linus projects in the past few years. And I did get three purple block sets out of all that purple!  Of course, now they will need to be assembled into tops - that's the boring part.