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Wednesday 10 June 2015

Every Scrap is Sacred!


I have dedicated this week to developing my quilt kits. These have been in the back of my mind for years, even before working for Doughty’s! Now that I have a few patterns under my belt, I feel it's time to move on to pre-cut kits. I do love a pre-cut, and having spent time helping customers choose colours for their projects, I know that not everyone is confident when it comes to colour co-ordination. Enter the pre-cut - where the hard work of matching fabrics is all done for you and you can get on with the sewing!

After much deliberation, I have settled on what fabric I want to use, and am now working on getting some of the million ideas that go around my brain daily onto paper! As I am determined to actually try out all my patterns before publishing them, I like to practice with my own stash first before cutting into anything new and ‘special’. Today however, I really have outdone myself! 


A few months ago I ran a quilt workshop for Doughty’s on my Whirlwind of Colour quilt – one of my designs for John Louden. Before the class I had to pre cut some jelly rolls using my Sizzix Big Shot Pro and their four-strip die… a very nice bit of kit! Anyway, I tend to cut a metre of fabric at a time, so the only wastage are thin strips cut from the folded edges and I put these in a bag with a half-hearted idea of doing something with them one day... sad I know!




Now, as I was sitting with my sketchbook the other night, half an eye on the TV, something stirred at the back of my brain, and out popped this…. Something to do with all those strips!


I knew some of the block would have to be foundation-pieced, but felt to have the whole centre strip done like this would drive me mad when it came to taking the papers out. So I decided to try something I’ve not done before – string piecing, or stitch-and-flip I think some call it. I made up a couple of panels using muslin as a foundation. I then drew up the foundation block, worked out the measurements for the white strips and grey triangles, and made up four gorgeous looking blocks, don’t you love them!!!




I think I’ll border it in white, or maybe grey, I’m not sure… but definitely with more strips for the binding. Just goes to show, every scrap is worth keeping! Oh dear, what have I said!?! 

There will be a pattern for this very soon, once I've turned it into something... so watch this space.



I hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings, thanks for stopping by – your comments are always welcome. Today, I’m linking up with Let’s Bee Social over at Sew Fresh Quilts, and Freshly Pieced’s WIP Wednesday.

8 comments:

  1. I DO love your string-pieced blocks. The thin white strips really make the colors pop.

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    1. Thank you very much, I am so pleased with how it turned out, just need to make more now! :) If you would like more quilty fun, why not pop along to sewmotion.com where I have more patterns and quilting know-how. :)

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  2. Love your awesome use of the scraps. The little pin stripes really make the mini!

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  3. Thank you for your kind words and for visiting!

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  4. What a clever block, Louisa! Looks like a fun design to sit and sew. And you are so right... No one likes to throw away fabric - no matter how small!

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  5. Sometimes when my scraps are too small I get very overwhelmed with sorting and weeding out what's usable and what's not, so I fear a lot gets tossed by the wayside.

    I would love to see some kind of tutorial using muslin as a foundation as you mentioned. I somehow don't mind taking all the papers out, but with so many strips like yours I could see where it could be a patience tester. Nice start.

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    1. Hi Allison, thank you, I'm glad you liked my block. When I used muslin for the base of my foundation strips, I didn't mark my sewing lines, I just went with whatever the width of my next strip was, pinned that in place on top of the preceeding strip, sew, press back and repeat. I suppose it was a little more crazy patchwork than the precise foundation piecing. Hope that helps, I will do a tutorial on this soon, and make more blocks similar... in fact I'm thinking of making a kit from this design, but in solids... what do you think?

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