Making Plans For Scraps, Leaders and Enders?

 Well I'm still sorting fabrics and making plans for new projects. If you missed out on the mess I made you can read about it here.   These may or may not get made but at least the scraps will be a little more organized.  I do this every now and then.  While organizing my mind can create some beautiful quilt designs that may or may not be made.  It's also very therapeutic.  Just standing here looking at this mound of fabric makes me sigh.   What a glorious site to behold.  Instead of designing a quilt I think I'll let these fabrics work their own magic by making a Scrappy Vortex Quilt.  You can see and read more about Crazy Mom Quilts Vortex quilt here.  It was a quilt along from a few years ago.  It's a great idea for mindless sewing and using up some scraps.

Not all of the scraps I've been hoarding will make it into a quilt.  This big yellow bag has become my dog pillow bag.  Most of the scraps in this back were in glass jars that were for decoration in my studio.  It's time to let them go and put them to good use.  Waste not, want not, right?  So a dog bed is the perfect answer.  In the bottom of the bag is also some smaller pieces of batting that will never be used.  Seriously, I've been holding onto it for 5-10 years, the chance of me using aren't good.  Not to mention there still 10 times that much I'm keeping.

During this cleaning and organizing I've also gathered up all the flippy corner bonus HST's and put them in one box.  The box on the right holds the needs to be cut to a usable size pieces.  The box on the left is the finished HST's squared up and sorted by size in labeled baggies. 

 I've also added a marker and extra baggies should I need them for different sizes.  Two days of chasing down baggies and a marker made me wonder why I didn't just add them to the box.  I buy both baggies and markers in large quantities.  So chasing them down everyday seems a little silly.

Every morning the first thing I do in the studio before starting anything else is grab a few HST's and square them up.  Doing as many as I can in 30 minutes before working on my current quilt project.  At this pace it could take months to finish them.  That is IF I can stick with it.  I've tried this before and....well...here I am still trying to get them done.  Wish me luck!

Now it's time to admit that I have a problem.  A one inch HST was saved today.  Why?  Well my motto has always been "If I can put a stitch it, I can quilt it."  The hoarder in me can not let it go, at least not for now.

In my defense I want to show you a quilt I made a few years ago.  The blocks finish at 1.25".  They to were flip and clip bonus HST's.  So there....I have and excuse for hoarding.  HA!

I wish I could tell you the box of triangles was all of them but it is not.  I also have many more that still need to be stitch together.  And with every quilt this just keeps getting larger.  Can I ever get to the bottom of this jar as a leaders and enders?  Only time will tell.  My instinct says just go sew a few together every day after you trim up the ones in the box.  Maybe I could devote another 30 minutes the the jar of triangles.

I might as well come clean.  I have another stash of triangles in my sewing cabinet.  These are all white.  There's also a stash of hundreds of white 2.5" squares under the lid. I promise that's all of them, that I know of.

Is it really hoarding if it's organized?  At what point does it tip the crazy scale?  The lens you use to look through makes all the difference when it comes to crazy.  I know you all understand...this is not crazy, it's just good common sense.  I see fabric scraps like this $$$$.  Not to open a can of worms but things have been a little crazy in the last year.  Who knows what can happen next.  If toilet paper sells out I've got us covered with hoarded fabric I don't like.  HAHA!

I'm moving along some scraps this week.  Whoo hoo!  MOOVING!!!!!!!!

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DWM~ Plans for HST's

Morning quilty friends.  I'm still plugging along on the Flippy corners quilt.  A few more blocks were made over the long weekend.   The adorable little 5.5"  twinkling stars have been the highlight of my weekend. However I've barely made a dent in the basket of bonus HST's.  But this seems like a good stopping place.  So I started playing around with a few setting ideas for the blocks.

Using only 8 blocks is a bit of a design challenge.  I came up 10 different layouts for the blocks.  How about a peek at a few of the ideas?  The design below really makes those twinkly stars shine.  The background fabric would be linen left over from another project.

Oh but I'm a real sucker for the white background.  Simple, and the stars still shine.

Maybe a table runner ....lots of room for quilting.

Decisions, Decisions....I like them all.  Which one would you make?

~ Lea Anne ~

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A tip for when you flip

Yesterday evening Mr. Podunk asked if I would do some "manly" sewing.  As much as I dislike doing mending and sewing hard to sew fabrics I did it with a smile.   Afterwards I felt the need to shake the man dust off of the sewing machine with a quick girly girl block.   This little cutie is 100% scraps even the white background.  You might recognize the green fabric from my latest Back Porch Blooms quilt along.  If your new to the blog and would like more information about the quilt along and free patterns you can read about it here and here.

 Most of my free patterns use the flippy corners method or as I like to called it "stitch, flip, clip".  The pictures below show the process.

1. stitch a diagonal line from corner to corner.  

2. Then stitch another line 1/2" or so away from the first line.  I just move my needle position over as far as it will go and line up the left side of the open toe foot up with the first stitched line.  

3.  Cut between the two stitch lines.

4. The part you cut off is your bonus half square triangle.

At this point I would just toss them in the basket beside my sewing machine just for  bonus HST's.   Not all flippy corners are large enough to keep.  The original size of the flippy corner must be at least 2" in order for me to take the extra step of stitching the second line.

After digging through the basket of goodies to find 8 matching HST's the fun part begins....clipping those wings!

  Using a ruler with a diagonal line makes the trimming go much faster.  Just place the line on the seam and trim two sides, turn and trim the other two sides

There's many different layout options for blocks.  Below is just a few.  A couple more good patterns would be  The ocean waves quilt block and  Tree of life quilt block.  The possibilities are endless!

I guess the old saying is true...."saved the best for last".   Hmm...looks like a sweet leaders and enders project to me, and a great little mini quilt to add to the wall.  So as you play along with the Back Porch Blooms Quilt along and Linky Party keep those extra HST's handy, there just might be a free pattern or two for using them up!

~  Lea Anne ~

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Every little piece saved

Just wanted to share with you how I keep all my tiny scraps.

 Scrap corners we all have them.  When first starting quilting these little pieces of clipped corners would be trashed.  Then I moved up to saving them and  putting them in bags to be sewn together later. 

Now I've taken it a step further and sew them as I go.  This is a method for making flying geese that I learn while doing the Barn Along mention in my last post.

 The only thing I do differently, that isn't in the tutorial is make another stitched line by lining up my foot on the previous stitched line.

 Then cute right down the middle.  Lets hope your hand is steadier than mine...better cut back on the coffee!

 This little HST'S (below) measures in at 1.5.  These could be used in another 6.5 block for my barns.  Its a Tree of Life block at 6.5!  Too darn cute!  Go check it out here!

 So far I've collected several different size HST's from this project.  The wonderful thing is that they will work in the barn blocks because they come from the barn blocks!  The basket block from Sewninwildoaks uses 1" squares , I could make another by cutting some of these down!

You can find the instructions for this block here.  It looks like some sort of bug to me, I'm not sure of its name.  Any ideas on the name?

I'm linking up with Connie  over at Freemotion by the River, hop on over and see what other bloggers are up to, you never know you might find a new project idea!

Until next time

"Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea

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