I'm Playing Along Too

Magpie Sue here. I stumbled onto this blog the other day. I've been making blocks like this for a at least a year now but there seems to be no end of scraps in sight so I figured I could play along and continue nibbling away at the accumulation of years of quiltmaking. I love the idea of spending at least 15 minutes a day sewing, and there's nothing like a commitment to someone else to hold me to it!

I originally had my scraps sorted by color families. When I got serious about trying to use them by making these blocks I found that sorting them by size was more efficient. You start with the smallest bits, you see, and then work your way up to the longer pieces. So now I have my bits in a popcorn tin when I'm not actively using them and my longer/bigger pieces in a plastic box. I can start a couple of blocks working out of the tin and then I move to the box when I need more length. I normally have at least two blocks going at a time, that way I can chain piece them. When I get to the end of a set of blocks I pick up two new little pieces of fabric, run them through the machine and leave them there until the next time. That's how I made the blocks for this quilt:

If you look carefully you'll notice that the alternate blocks - between the Shoo Fly and Barn Door blocks - are all liberated log cabins/crumb blocks. The "precision pieced" blocks were all made out of patches I cut from larger leftover pieces of fabric so they're all scrappy too.

I have to admit that when I first completed the top I was a bit overwhelmed by the busy-ness of it. After I quilted and bound it (it has a multi-fabric binding too) I put it away for a couple of weeks. Then I had an opportunity to take it to a friends' house where we laid it out on the grass. That was when I fell in love with it. Now I'm looking forward to the cooler weather when we can have it on the couch to snuggle under while we watch TV. :- )