realm of scraps

Today the Queen of the Scrap Heap (moi) held court. We settled some
disputes, officiated at a couple of marriages, expelled a number of illegal
aliens, and naturalized quite a few newcomers, and did a bit of midwifery.
The Black Hole Scrap Basket is once again an orderly realm, full but not
overflowing. It has given birth to a stack of string blocks, and a pile of
HSTs awaits further processing.
The Queen Rules!
Roberta in D, Q ot SH

Ride on, my Queen! You rock!

Karen, Queen of Squishies
--
* We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. - Oscar
Wilde *

As the Queen, would you care to give me some pointers on instilling order
amongst the scrap chaos? I've picked up a couple of cool scrap quilt books,
but I can see that my current system (it all gets thrown in a bag in the
corner) is NOT going to work.

--
Kathy A. (Woodland, CA)
longarm machine quilting, Queen of Fabric Tramps
http://www.kayneyquilting.com ,
remove the obvious to reply


"Roberta Zollner" wrote in message
...
Today the Queen of the Scrap Heap (moi) held court. We settled some
disputes, officiated at a couple of marriages, expelled a number of
illegal
aliens, and naturalized quite a few newcomers, and did a bit of midwifery.
The Black Hole Scrap Basket is once again an orderly realm, full but not
overflowing. It has given birth to a stack of string blocks, and a pile of
HSTs awaits further processing.
The Queen Rules!
Roberta in D, Q ot SH

IMO as the Queen, the only way to rule scraps is to keep sewing them into
blocks. Don't even bother organizing. If you let them get organized, they
take over your space. Who needs several bins full of color-coordinated
scraps? All my scraps fit into the Black Hole Basket, which is about 8" high
and maybe 12" across at the top. It is clearly a black hole because it is
larger on the inside than on the outside: entire quilts have been made from
the contents without any real drop in the scrap level. OTOH, I never have
more than will fit in the basket.

Your current system (throwing in the corner) will work fine if you take a
couple of afternoons on a regular basis to Do Something with those scraps!
Today was my day to rule. I now have 20 string blocks (small carriage quilt
or big preemie quilt) and a little pile of miscellaneous stars, plus lots
more pieces cut for the portable hand piecing project (2.5" bowties).
Roberta in D

"Kathy Applebaum" wrote in message
. ..
As the Queen, would you care to give me some pointers on instilling order
amongst the scrap chaos? I've picked up a couple of cool scrap quilt
books,
but I can see that my current system (it all gets thrown in a bag in the
corner) is NOT going to work.

--
Kathy A. (Woodland, CA)
longarm machine quilting, Queen of Fabric Tramps
http://www.kayneyquilting.com ,
remove the obvious to reply


"Roberta Zollner" wrote in message
...
Today the Queen of the Scrap Heap (moi) held court. We settled some
disputes, officiated at a couple of marriages, expelled a number of
illegal
aliens, and naturalized quite a few newcomers, and did a bit of
midwifery.
The Black Hole Scrap Basket is once again an orderly realm, full but not
overflowing. It has given birth to a stack of string blocks, and a pile
of
HSTs awaits further processing.
The Queen Rules!
Roberta in D, Q ot SH

I'm no queen, nor even an experienced expert, but I can tell you about a
recent experience that might help.


I'd been dithering over a quilt for ages. I liked the odd colors I'd
chosen (rust, turquoise, aqua, gray, butter) and was having too much fun
making each block unique. I fussed and fidgeted and created lots of
scraps. The scraps took over my table. I couldn't put them in the
scrap box because I might use those pieces in the quilt. It got to
where I couldn't work. I desperately needed more of a particular gray
fabric, shopped for it, couldn't find it anywhere, substituted, then
found that I had it all along. (And I give others advice on getting
organized!) Something had to be done.


I abandoned the traditionally pieced block quilt I'd been working on for
too long and attacked the scrap pile. I don't know if you'd call them
color coordinated or not. The colors had something in common, or they
wouldn't all go in that big quilt, but they weren't carefully considered
either. They were scraps.


I started sewing together willy-nilly. I put two pieces with sides of
roughly equal size together and sewed. Then I whacked off excess and
sewed again. I'll have to figure out a way to show you the 2 finished
tops, the planned one and the scrap one, because I'm sure you'll all
agree that the scrap one is far superior. In fact, I haven't made
anything I like so much in the longest time.


I can't recommend this system enough. Sew and whack; sew and whack.
Don't think until the pieces get the size of a 12.5" ruler. Then whack
down to a 12.5" square. Use the whacked off pieces to start the next block.


--Lia


Kathy Applebaum wrote:
As the Queen, would you care to give me some pointers on instilling order
amongst the scrap chaos? I've picked up a couple of cool scrap quilt books,
but I can see that my current system (it all gets thrown in a bag in the
corner) is NOT going to work.

As the Queen, would you care to give me some pointers on instilling
order amongst the scrap chaos?

Kathy! I can help you!!! Go to the post office, get a Priority Mail
box to fit and get rid of them to some deserving person who loves
scraps. Then you can have the true joy of starting that scrap heap all
over again! I do it that way and LOVE it!

Leslie (who measures quilting progress by how much is in the green scrap
basket- more scraps equals more quilts!) and The Furbabies (who are
MAJOR scrap rootlers!) ;-)

"Julia Altshuler" wrote in message
news:ZdMZb.369519$xy6.1924147@attbi_s02...

The colors had something in common, or they
wouldn't all go in that big quilt, but they weren't carefully considered
either. They were scraps.

And therein lies my dilemma. I need a way that I can put the scraps that
have something in common together. I've made several quilts out of my
current scrap heap, and I've looked at them critically, and decided they
were TOO scrappy. I just pulled out the bag and sewed, with no regard to
light / dark, hot / cool, vibrant / muted. It didn't click. So I've paid
attention to scrappy quilts that I like, and I've noticed that while they
have a lot of diversity, there is also a sort of overall unification, with a
few things in there that defy the "rule" to add some zing.

I'm thinking I might need to do some basic sorting into just a few bags.
Maybe hot-vibrant, hot-muted, cool-vibrant, cool-muted, and "unclassifiable"
would do the trick. Hmmm....

--
Kathy A. (Woodland, CA)
longarm machine quilting, Queen of Fabric Tramps
http://www.kayneyquilting.com ,
remove the obvious to reply

"Leslie in Missouri" wrote in message
...
As the Queen, would you care to give me some pointers on instilling
order amongst the scrap chaos?

Kathy! I can help you!!! Go to the post office, get a Priority Mail
box to fit and get rid of them to some deserving person who loves
scraps. Then you can have the true joy of starting that scrap heap all
over again! I do it that way and LOVE it!

Good try! (And yes, I've done that method. LOL)

--
Kathy A. (Woodland, CA)
longarm machine quilting, Queen of Fabric Tramps
http://www.kayneyquilting.com ,
remove the obvious to reply

All my scraps fit into the Black Hole Basket, which is about 8" high
and maybe 12" across at the top. It is clearly a black hole because
it is larger on the inside than on the outside: entire quilts have
been made from the contents without any real drop in the scrap level.

Whereas our composting bin never fills up - in three years we've just
kept adding vegetable scraps to it and the level's never reached the
top.

Perhaps decaying vegetables tunnel through space-time to re-emerge as
fabric?

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Hullo Lia
This sounds a lot like the famous Mile-a-Minute system for a scrap
quilt.
I made a miniature! just to see if it worked, you understand g. It
did look nice I must say - though it was monochromatic! I don't know
whether I could 'stand' unplanned sizes *and* random colours? Maybe,
one day, when I am a stronger quilter!
..
In article ZdMZb.369519$xy6.1924147@attbi_s02, Julia Altshuler
writes
I'm no queen, nor even an experienced expert, but I can tell you about
a recent experience that might help.
snipped

I started sewing together willy-nilly. I put two pieces with sides of
roughly equal size together and sewed. Then I whacked off excess and
sewed again. I'll have to figure out a way to show you the 2 finished
tops, the planned one and the scrap one, because I'm sure you'll all
agree that the scrap one is far superior. In fact, I haven't made
anything I like so much in the longest time.


I can't recommend this system enough. Sew and whack; sew and whack.
Don't think until the pieces get the size of a 12.5" ruler. Then whack
down to a 12.5" square. Use the whacked off pieces to start the next
block.


--Lia
--
Best Regards
pat on the hill