scraps

What to do with all of this?

Posted on by Tisha

I wrote earlier this year that changes were coming in 2013.  Over the last couple of months I have found myself going back and forth on what I want do with my business and blog.  In ~seven weeks I will be wearing so many hats, good thing I can take challenge on head first.

Mom, health educator, and small business owner will be a lot to handle.  So I decided to let you guys in on a secret.  I cheat!  There I said it.  I cheat when sewing.  Over the last few years I have been using Moda precuts to create many of my projects.  Even making some of my own with varying lines.  These quilts are made with just 5″ squares.

nautical baby boy quilt

neutral boys quilt

Mostly the same fabrics but very different looks.

Precuts are a great way to sample an entire fabric line with minimal investment.  My favorites are charm packs, jelly rolls, and fat quarters.  I may have a few in my stash currently.

Many charm packs
Many charm packs
jelly rolls, fat quarter bundles, and a variety of other goodies.
jelly rolls, fat quarter bundles, and a variety of other goodies.

Last week I posted about my scrap management project.  Oddly, this blog post was in my inbox the same week as well.  4 Easy Steps to De-Clutter and Get Healthy.  Good timing.  Maybe this project won’t help me get healthy physically but can affect my mental health, knowing I have checked something off my list.  Plus organization feels great.

Throughout the next couple of months I want to showcase projects to really use up my scrap bins and what I have. After this weekend’s adventure of packing up all my fabric into 5 large totes, one thing is clear.  There is ALOT of fabric in my stash.

If you follow me on Pinterest you may have noticed an influx of ideas on the boards.  Can’t wait to share the projects completed from just the stash.

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Scrappy Boys Quilt 1

Posted on by Tisha

A few months ago I worked on my first Oh Fransson Mod Mosaic quilt for a new baby girl.  It was really liberating to have no pattern and just piece things together.  After making one of them, I wanted to make more.

Baby Girl Mod Mosaic Quilt

In an effort to use what I have already in my scraps, I started the challenge of trying to make two boy quilts with my scraps in a modified mod mosaic pattern.  I have been working on these quilts most of January and finally finished one.  The pieces even traveled with me to San Francisco.

boy theme quilt pieces

Here is the finished quilt.  A lucky little guy in Pennsylvania will be snuggling with this upon his arrival.

boy theme mod mosaic quilt

I wanted to keep with random quilting all over.  To make this just a bit different there are a few spots with a satin stitch in the corner.  Of course it was to cover up an oops.

boy mod mosaic quilt

Only new fabric on this quilt is the backing.  Found this great print at one of my favorite local shops, Crimson Tate.  She had a great sale towards the end of December and when I saw this, I knew it was perfect.

quilt backing

For added security on the binding I have started machine binding the entire binding. Normally I would sew it onto the front, turn over, then stitch on the back.  However, I have found it much easier to sew the binding onto the back and turn it over and top stitch on the front.  I like the look better.  Swim, Bike, Quilt has a tutorial posted here.  She notes that there are lots of ways to bind a quilt and my style has changed even over the last year.

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Scrap Management

Posted on by Tisha

My scraps are taking over my sewing space.  It was verging on hoarding level, seriously.  With the upcoming move of the sewing space to another area in the house something had to be done.  My goal for February is to have my fabric and scraps better organized.

I created a system to go through all my scraps and sort them.  Big pieces of some of my favorites…keep, solids…keep, and everything else was cut into squares.  Given my love of precuts, this made it much easier to select sizes.  Squares were cut into 2″, 2.5″, and 5″ for my sanity in storing them.

scrap squares

cutting scraps

Thanks to the dollar store for the lime green buckets below.  Should make managing my precut sizes much easier.

scrap bins

While going through all of my scraps there had to be a cut off on what to keep.  Honestly, I feel bad throwing some stuff out.  It’s become apparent I can’t keep everything, I will never get around to doing something with it.

Thanks to my hubby for letting me take over his bar in the basement for this project.  If he wanted me around this weekend, it was his best bet.

I would love to hear how you handle scraps?  At what point do you decide to keep, cut, and/or purge?

scrap squares

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Mod-Mosaic Baby Girl Quilt

Posted on by Tisha

My scrap bin had really been filling up and I had a request for a baby girl quilt.  The colors were orange, pink, light purple, brown, and a bit of yellow.  The idea struck me to use Oh Fransson’s Mod Mosaic pattern for the quilt to use up my scraps.

Improv piecing is one of my favorite things about modern quilting. I really tried to keep the piecing random and building as I went with every block.

For quilting I went with random lines criss crossing along the way.

I have already received a photo of the cute baby all snuggled up on the quilt enjoying some snoozing.

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Pink and Green Scrap Square Quilt

Posted on by Tisha

Could you imagine having 3 little girls and really wanting a boy? Only to find out that baby #4 is another girl?  The lucky recipient of this girl is a beautiful new baby girl with a dad who was really hoping for a boy. Also, he’s a Jets fan.  Shocking my husband, a devout Giants fan, let me make this quilt.

Seriously, the dad is ecstatic with his new bundle of joy.  When asked to make the quilt, the goal was to not make it too girly using pink and green.  I started pulling fabrics and the idea came to me.  I would use 1.5″ and 2″ squares in pink and green to give the quilt the right touch.

Luckily most of the fabric was in my scraps and no new fabric needed to be purchased for this quilt.  This may be a first.  Cutting the very small squares took a while, but the piecing took longer.

The small squares did exactly what I wanted; green with a just a pop of pink.

Laying out the quilt took a couple different designs and this is the one I decided on.

A diagonal pattern worked out great for these small squares.  Strips of where formed to make piecing the top easier.

For quilting I wanted something simple that didn’t overpower the quilt.  Binding is a solid pink and the back was a green print.

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Square Scrap Quilt

Posted on by Tisha

For the Mother’s Day quilts that I made in May, I did use many fabrics already in my stash.  Even after making three lap sized quilts, there are still plenty of scraps left over.

 

After spending an hour in the sewing room just sewing I was able get through many of the squares.  Just need to clean off the design wall to get my idea laid out.

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