On Friday, I was just thinking that I have neither ‘IN’ nor ‘OUT’ to report this week since I have not been sewing much at the machine. Oh soooo boring. But over the weekend, sewing happened!
Fabric IN
Zilch (for now!)
Fabric OUT
3 yards (and more on the way out!)
I’ve seen many beautiful string quilts on Flickr and they look like really good scrap-busting projects to work on. There are essentially 2 methods of creating string quilts – piecing with fabric foundation or paper foundation. Piecing with fabrics sounds like a great way to bust some serious stash too. But I don’t think I like the extra weight, plus I can imagine the amount of seams in the quilt (by the way, I’m aiming for a Queen Sized quilt). So, it is paper piecing for me. For fabric foundation method, click here.
I have a ream of A3 sized, low GSM paper that we used for mapping out projects (day job) ideas and they are perfect for paper foundation piecing. So, I did a test block, following this tutorial from Film in the Fridge. I find it ‘slippery’ to sew with paper and because some of the scrap strips are cut on bias, it was a little challenging trying to set the 1st diagonal straight. This will create problems when I put the blocks together and I would expect the center strips of the blocks to match. So, I modified the instructions a little by marking two lines, 1/2″ from the center diagonal on the paper (my center strip is 1″ wide).
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Mock-up block
Back to the drawing pad, I planned the colour way and layout of the quilt.
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Afterwards, I pulled out the scrap buckets and started sorting them out by colours. So, most of the scraps are in 6 bags now (and why do I still have the same number of scrap buckets left under the table???). I also cut up some fabrics from yardage to make up for the colours and centre string.
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Scrap bag
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ooooouuuglies
This also gives me the opportunity to use up some Uglies in my charm packs and FQs that I probably will never use in a non-scrappy project.
Week 4: 26 April – 2 May
In: 0 yds
Out: 3 yds
YTD total:
Purchased: 24.59 yds
Busted: 7.75 yds
net: -16.84 yds