What fun we had at the
Choo Choo Quilters guild meeting this month! I was on the team that presented the
program, "Making Do." The program provided ideas for using scraps, working with "what you have," and options for creating blocks or quilts while working within fabric limitations—whether color, size, print, or value.
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| Improv piecing using fabric swatches and scraps. |
I was happy to contribute discontinued fabric samples and swatches that surfaced through my y
ear-end clean-eand-purge session. I hate to just throw away good, first quality quilting fabrics—even smaller bits—so, with the help of my program team members, our guild members are going to help recycle them into cuddle quilts for our community service endeavor.
My team presented myriad ideas for block patterns, tips for working with fabric scraps and easy piecing techniques. You likely will recognize many of these classic quilt blocks—log cabin, half-square triangles, snowball, Chinese coins. They are perfect patterns for using scraps!
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| Scrap blocks. |
After the formal presentation, guild members sorted the big bag of swatches.
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| Sorting scraps by size and shape. |
In researching "scrap organizing systems," my team concluded that sorting "by size" (rather than by color) was recommended by a lot of quilters. This also worked well for the homework exercise we had in mind. We set up stations for small, medium and large scraps, squares, triangles and two sizes of rectangles. My assortment of swatches dictated these categories.
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| Choosing scraps for the community service homework assignment. |
After sorting, guild members were given a zip-lock bag to stuff with scraps—with the intention of making blocks, strips or even a full quilt top for our community service project.
It was interesting to note that several people took photos of the block samples as inspiration for their homework assignment.
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| With digital technology at our fingertips, many quilters take notes via their cameras. |
As they say, "A picture is worth a thousand words."
