Scrappy Shirt Tails

I have a quilting angel......... a dear friend called Sandra who lives in Georgia & spoils me by sending me wonderful surprise  packages of recycled shirt fabric. 

Inspired by a quilt in one of Bonnie Hunter's books, I started making these star blocks, quilt as you go method. But........ you know me, after about 7 or 8 of them, I just got bored and  started playing with the fabric & making a mixture of different blocks, whatever took my fancy at the time.

Union Square

Sister's Choice

Ohio Star

Some are traditional & some just made up to fill the gaps where required. Not much maths has been involved in this process as I tend to get it wrong!

Beginnings of a layout

Planning another row to be added on the right

Of course, quality control has to be monitored at each and every stage!

Progress so far

For the "Quilt as You Go" sashing & backing, I'm recycling a cotton double size duvet cover that I picked up at a local charity shop for £2......good value or what?

The back

I'm trying to be as accurate as possible, but there are already and no doubt will be more missing points off stars, geese loosing the tips of their beaks etc, but I'm not too fussed about this as, after all, quilting is meant to be fun and not stressful. 

Whatever you're making, enjoy the process, 'till next time, happy stitching :)

PS. Apologies for the formatting on this post.....blogger's just not playing ball tonight!

Scraps & Strings

  

 

Do you follow Bonnie Hunter on Quiltcam? Recently I've been watching & learning how she paper pieces scraps & strings onto paper & finally gave in to try some myself as I have a fair size tub of scraps accumulating.

Of course Lucy was there right in the thick of it helping pick out some strings and quite a mess was created!

Having experimented with a few sizes, I finally chose to cut phone book paper to 3.5" wide x 10.5" long for my strip piecing. Once trimmed & paper removed I added 1.25" black strips to each side & cut the points with my Companion angle ruler. Neutral triangles were cut with the same ruler from 3.25" strips & added to each side, the block was then trimmed down to 7.5" square.

The blocks are then joined together, either in rows or units of 4, which ever way you prefer to work....

Initially I was starting to use just the repro scraps but then decided to follow Bonnie's advice & mix it all up, even using smaller crumbs joined together to form a strip and odd left over half sq triangle units, 4 patches, whatever, you name it, in it goes!

If you just fancy mindless sewing to use up those odds & ends, this is a great project. I'm really enjoying the process and the end result :)

Since starting this, I've discovered that Bonnie has a free pattern for this (minus the black) on her blog here