Quilting teaches me.... Frugality

Some people seem to feel that quilting without a purpose is a waste of time, material, and talent. So what? So what if I go into the sewing room, sew a bunch of blocks and then end up hiding them in the closet? So. What? 

That's what I thought. So what? I could spend the same amount of time doing anything else--playing on the computer, window shopping, making cookies. They all "waste" in a sense if the end result uses resources (gas, electricity, time, etc.) and there is little or nothing gained. Except! There's that entertainment value and (maybe) a sense of accomplishment. Quilting, even with no purpose or completion, does the same.

Truthfully, the entertainment value is rather high if you consider all of the expenses. I'd rather not. I'd rather focus on the good things. The quilts, the clothing, the home accessories. Those kinds of things and many more have come out of my studio. And in almost every case there was little or no waste. Here's why: I use every tiny scrap of every thing. No kidding. The scraps of fabric, well, that's a given. 


But I use the scraps of thread. When that spool goes in the trash, it is completely, utterly, empty. And I don't waste pieces in the middle. Indeed, Richard has commented on how frugal I am with thread. The same with needles. So long as the machine and needle are doing their jobs, why change? I don't throw out a pot after cooking X number of meals. Why some folks change the needle after every project is well beyond my comprehension. 

What else do I save? Hmm, I rotary cutter blades, pins of any kind, needles, scissors (don't you dare use my scissors!) and any other tool in the making of a quilt. I take very good care of them all. And for the disaster that my sewing room seems to be, I'm fairly well capable of finding most of those tools. It may take a moment or even a hot minute, but it's there somewhere. 

I'm super crazy about saving paper. That's from teaching in a poor school where paper is like gold. Zippers, buttons, string, any form of embellishment, they are gold! So I use the front and backs of paper, recycle all the others and call myself a frugal girl. If a wasteful family member says I'm a hoarder, well, maybe that person should begin watching his/her "carbon footprint." Mine seems to be rather small, if only the wasteful ones follow my wishes when I'm gone.

Marley's "Girl Pillow," made from playing with scraps

Quilting teaches me...

Perseverance

Charity

Simplicity

Patience

Why

Authenticity

Courage

Contentment

Frugality

Finish

Pin It Weekly #255

I imagine it's time to get back to pinning. Question: was I on a herringbone/chevron thing before the computer crash? Well, whatever happened, it was hefty because there are easily 15 chevron quilts in one small section of my "heart, quilts" board. 

Aren't they pretty? Also on the board are lots of easy scrap quilts. Something we all need if we're ever going to get those scrap bins under control, am I right? Here are a few:

Saturday Sewing

I've started a new quilt top. It's somewhat like  AmandaJean's "Vortex" quilt. However, I've made other quilts that use only scraps in them.

It's just a matter of sewing lots of scraps together. I tend to make sheets about the same size then sew those together to make larger sheets. "Murky Waters" is a good example of my process.

What I have under my needle will be more colorful since I'm using scraps from every bucket in the closet.

Most of the scraps are some were cut into 2½" strips. Those too small to be a strip turned into blocks. I have lots of strips! My plan is to use any extra 2½" strips for binding once the quilt is finished.

I'm stopping right here to define/explain my process and define scrap, slip, sheet and script. Those are the words I use in this process. First I sew small pieces together. I just keep sewing and sewing small pieces. Generally I try to match the sizes of two pieces but I might sew two small pieces to a larger piece without cutting anything--that comes later. 

When I have (about 25? 46? 97? I don't know) enough to be tired of this process, I take the whole thing and go to the iron. Press open to the darker side. Snip them apart and trim really jagged edges with scissors, take them all back to the machine. Now I sew them into slips of fabric. A slip is a small piece of joined scraps. Imagine that you tear a piece of paper to write a note. That's the size of a slip.

Okay so we have lots of slips, go to the iron and press, snip, trim using the iron and scissors. Important note: from this point onward, I look at the number of seams and press away from the side that has the most seams. The idea is to reduce bulkiness. 

I start joining slips into sheets. If two pieces are close in size, I may add a long scrap to the smaller one, then come back to sew them together later. It's not a big deal if they don't match up perfectly. Sew, sew, sew. Sew some more. Use up all the scraps and slips if possible. (It never is, but we can hope.)

By now you have the routine: sew scraps into slips. Sew slips into sheets. Sew sheets into scripts. (See what I did there? All writing words from an English teacher.) But I add a step at the end. After pressing the sheets, I take them all to the cutting table and cut one edge using my ruler and rotary blade. A square edge makes sewing sheets together much easier. I try to avoid having parallel seams on the edges as they can get sewn into the seam and cause bulkiness. 

Okay, so we have scripts. Hopefully many of them. I press and trim, then cut all four sides of a script into get squares and/or rectangles of uniform sizes. Sometimes "uniform size" means only two will match. Finished scripts go on the design wall so I can look at how they will fit together. Once there enough for a quilt, sew them together and there's a top.

So far, I have quite a few nice sheets. It's going to take many more sheets to get the queen size that I'm dreaming of. It's one of those I-don't-have-any-idea-why quilts. I think it's just to get back into the quilting groove. 

So on Friday I started sewing scraps together, just to be able to sew. On Saturday I started making sheets about 10" x 10"--give or take. Then had an idea for how to use them. On Sunday I woke up to another idea that I liked better. So I ripped out a few seams and started over. It's Tuesday and I don't like the pattern or the colors. However, I've got to stop this wishy-washy business and do something. To that end, I'm just going to keep sewing more scraps and slips and sheets and scripts. Something's bound to happen. Right?

Neutrals and reds and math

Oh my heavens, y'all, I do not know a bit of math. Nothing. Nada. Puh. How do I know? Because I needed math all day. Know what I got? Puh!

I've continued working on the neutrals scrap quilt top. Thanks to your encouragement, I decided to keep going with the red scraps because, I wanted to make it work. I'm hard-headed that way. Besides, I had sewn some of the scraps into fabric blocks. 

I have a 15" square ruler and cut the beige pieces into uniform blocks to match the ruler. That was easy and helped me with the math. I'd made about nine of the blocks before beginning with the red. As I added red chunks to the beige blocks, I re-cut the blocks so that they were back to 15". But I have more creativity than good sense, meaning I abandoned the one thing that made the math easy.

I started adding red to the beige blocks and didn't make the extra cuts. Instead, I made bigger blocks and tried to match them up. That didn't work. I rearranged the crazy big blocks. No. 

I rearranged and made strips. Then I rearranged those strips, adding more beige in places, thinking there was now too much red. No! 

Then finally. Finally! I arranged the pieces on point. Yes. That somehow did the trick. I liked the angles of the individual pieces and small strips. 

So what's the problem? Well, math. As long as I had uniform blocks, I could do the multiplication and division. But now things were happening on an angle and in an unsystematic manner. The biggest blocks were all about the same 15 x 20, so I made one strip of those. Sewing them on the 15" edges? No. That would make the strip match the others. 

So I have one strip that is 20" wide; none of the strips are equal in length; and everything is on an angle. Yes, there's a chance that this quilt will unravel me! 

When I decided to phone a friend, I considered calling my sister Lee. She teaches high school math. The hard math. But I figured that I should ask Richard first. I called him and tried to tell him what I needed to know. Turns out I couldn't really explain it to him. Regardless, he was stumped. Okay? So then, I'll call Lee. He laughed at me! How dare he? 

Then he told me why he was laughing. I didn't know what to ask. Honestly, at the time I couldn't even think of the words equation or formula. How do you tell a math teacher what you need if you don't know any of her math words? 

In the end I decided to keep adding pieces and triangles until the 15" strips match the 20" strip. But they have to match on an angle. 
Check out this last picture. I have two sides with straight edges! And know what? That crazy 20" strip is in there! It IS the upper left corner and matches up with the other strips. If you look on the bottom right corner, I have another corner. Whew! Math is stressful!

Link Ups!

Crazy Mom Quilts (Finish It Up Friday)

Busy Hands Quilts (Finished or Not Friday)

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: SCRAPS

Normally I would show actual scraps--piles of scraps--but those are not really a thing on Pinterest.  We'll just have to be happy with scrap projects to see the scraps. But after that, we'll take a look at some actual scrap quilts. Does that make sense? 

  

Are you inspired to get those scraps out? How do you sort them? Wait, do you sort them? If so, by color, size, theme, line, what? I really want to hear from you. I mean, geez, very few of you ever leave me a comment.  I like comments. And I love my bloggy friends. Today is a good day to leave a comment. Okay?