Saturday, October 29, 2011

Scrappy Saturday - more border fabric auditions

I was going to sew this afternoon, but I ran into a roadblock - a furry one.  So decided to do an early blog posting instead.


Guess who is fast asleep (and snoring) in the sunny puddle under my sewing chair?  He's been sickly for the last week, favouring his arthritic legs, and uncharacteristically morose.  And, feeling sorry for him, I decided to do something else until he wakes up and moves on his own.  That should be fairly soon.  If he doesn't wake on his own, I'll start cooking something and that will get him to move fairly quickly into the kitchen.

Remember the big pile of ironed scraps from my huge scrap bin on wheels?

This is what it looks like now.

I found some more scraps today that will work in my Modern Monday sampler.  Hooray.


I also found a wide strip of the little floral I'm using in my Traditional Tuesday Sampler.  I don't know whose scrap bin it came from originally, but they have great taste.


Here's a pic of the scraps I've piled up with just 15 minutes a day of scrap trimming so far.  When I come across a chunk the size of a fat quarter I just fold that into the yardage stash.  A couple of days ago, I came across a stack of strips 4" wide of all the same Thimbleberries golden neutral (at least a yard's worth) - those went into the stash bin with brown and tan yardage without being cut further.  So far, the biggest pile is 1.5" strips, followed by 2.5" x 4.5" bricks and 2.5" squares.  All in all, it's a very respectable showing for the trimming to date.  There's some bigger chunks of fabric at the top of my pile now, so I may be able to get some larger squares in the next few days.


I starched my foundation fabric for six more string blocks (if I can get to my machine).  This is all I have left in the smaller than 1.5" strings.


The bag of strings smaller than 1" that I separated out for my experiment with fabric knitting or crocheting... I tucked this bag away in the UFO bin for that future day when I'm bored with everything I have going and just feel like experimenting.  I have some serious doubts about the attempt.  Let me put it this way, I'm not saving this size string in my scrap trimming under the mistaken delusion that I'm going to take up crocheting fabric rag rugs.


Pulled out the 1.5" strip box for today's string piecing session...  Lucas is still asleep.  If it wasn't for the snoring, I'd have to check to see if he's breathing.


I discovered that the dark blue I used in my sashing and laid out as the final border of my Shady Lanes quilt is down to the last half yard - not enough to border a queen size quilt.  I used to have so much yardage of that fabric (I loved it so).  So I pulled out some other fabrics to audition.  Absolutely hated all the browns I tried.  Looked for more blues to audition.  This bright blue floral with the red and yellow wasn't bad in person but I don't like it in the pic below.  There's quite a bit of red and yellow in the scrap patches.  Yeah - I'm trying to hard to make it work.


Rejected the blue/green/silver paisley, yet again.  I've got enough yardage to back two quilts with this fabric.  It's really pretty but doesn't seem to play nicely with anything else.


This large floral on black wasn't bad.  The red still worked with it.  There is some black in the blue half square triangles.  Definitely worth considering...


But this vintage floral on cream was just waaaaay too light.


I'm thinking the floral on black and the dark red zinger may be the winner.

Lucas is still sleeping... think I'll make myself something to eat.


Or maybe I'll indulge in a nap myself.

1 comment:

  1. You are a dedicated scrap trimmer. I look at my pile and go, "maybe later".
    I love the scraps you found for your Modern Monday blocks--they are flaming!
    It is hard to switch gears when you were so sure of how you were going to finish something and then you can't. Good luck with that. I wouldn't rule out the light one completely--I would try it with a narrow strip of a darker color on both sides of it. But since I can only see a small portion of the quilt, so I don't get the full effect that you do.
    Lucas looks sooo comfortable.

    ReplyDelete