Using up some Fabrics

I spent the past week cleaning out fabrics and organizing.  Sometimes you just want a clean work area.  But I also think it’s time I use up some of my fabrics in case we’ll be making another trans-Atlantic move sometime soon.

  I was having a hard time trying to figure out what I want to do with all my scraps and fabric bits.  I honestly think that I’ll have enough to make several quilts but I picked out a pattern from Bonnie Hunter’s “Addicted To Scraps” book to start with.  I spent several days cutting out the pieces and I had almost everything the quilt called for.

I love it when that happens!

I don’t have enough of the brown that I need for the setting triangles so I’ll try to buy just enough.  I thought maybe I could cut them out a different way but I cut one and remembered making the 1930’s quilt earlier this summer and watching a video that stressed the importance of cutting your setting triangles in such a way that the outside of the triangles isn’t cut on the fabric bias.  If the outside of your quilt is all bias cut, you can have a lot of stretching and fabric distortion.

So, I’ll need to buy a bigger piece of brown fabric so that I can cut the setting triangles from a 9 3/4 inch square.  Those squares will be cut diagonally twice to make 4 triangles that are not stretchy.

I sewed a couple of the blocks together to see how well they work out.

They went together beautifully.  I always love using Bonnie’s patterns because she even tells you which way to iron the seam allowance!

So I’ll work on these easy blocks this fall and try to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my scraps.

I even have this bunch of selvedge scraps that would be fun to use in a project.

I used the last bunch in my spider web quilt and I absolutely love it.

I love the challenge to use up what I have to make something new and fun!