This will be my 15 Minutes To Quilt post for the week. I quilted 4 days this week but quilted quite a bit longer than 15 minutes each day. On Friday evening, I took a ton of photographs of quilt projects that are in the works that I am trying to finish. The scrappy Arkansas Snowflakes pictured here were among the photos taken.
I mentioned in last week’s 15 Minutes To Quilt post that I have a few scrap projects that I try to work on each week because they are massive and I like to keep making progress on them. Well…this week the scrap projects took me hostage and working on scrap projects took over other projects and goals…though I had FUN!
I’d planned to work on piecing the pink and black and purple blocks together with sashing. I’d planned to finish the pieced backing for the wild color scheme quilt. I’d hoped to put together a whole new set of blocks you haven’t seen yet with narrow sashes but the best laid plans can fall apart in the face of new scrap donations. Early in the week my sister called to see when I’d be in Cedar Rapids because she’d picked up some scrap donations from a scrap/fabric angel that she wanted to hand off to me. Never one to turn down donations of scraps I made arrangements to meet her. I thought there might be a grocery bag full of scraps, or a box of scraps. But low and behold! There were three or four big boxes and three or four small bags all filled with scraps.
With new scraps to play with – and limited space in the storage room I figured I’d better get busy and process scraps. (I press the ones large enough to cut quilt pieces from and use templates to draw the shapes onto the scraps. During TV time I cut the scraps into shapes for specific quilts (like the Arkansas Snowflakes here. I sort the scraps too small to cut specific pieces into the bin for crumb quilt blocks, and I sort those less than an inch square into the large, wheeled garbage can that sits in my storage room. I use those pieces to stuff dog and cat beds…so everything gets used. Eventually.
With so many new fabrics to play with I spent a lot of time tracing shapes on fabric scraps so that I’d later be able to cut them out while watching TV. Then, with a lot of new pieces cut from the donated scraps, I was inspired to work on scrap projects. I worked quite a bit on the Arkansas Snowflake blocks pictured here. I only photographed 9 of the finished blocks, but I have 65 completed.
65 is enough for a kid-sized charity quilt if I use some borders, but I’m going to continue making the blocks as I eventually want to make more than one charity quilt using this pattern, and I’d eventually like to make a king-sized quilt for my own bed which would take about 320 blocks.
What are your favorite patterns for using scraps? Do you have a go-to pattern for using up scraps?
Before I end this post, I’d like to share one of my favorite quilting gadgets which I used a lot this week. This is a little device which uses your used rotary cutting blades and incorporates them into a little cutter which quickly and easily cuts the threads between pieces when you chain piece. A friend gave me mine and it has become one of my favorite quilting gadgets.
Today I’m linking with Life in Pieces – 15 Minutes To Quilt, Melva Loves Scraps, Scrap Happy Saturday, Oh Scrap! At Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework! and Patchwork and Quilts Sunday.
Those Arkansas Snowflakes are a fun block! I’ve never made them, but they look like one I’d enjoy trying. My go to scrappy block is a crumb block because I can just sew and trim until I get the size I want!
Hi Diann,
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. The Arkansas Snowflakes are a fun block. Mine finish at 6 inches. I made the blocks small so that I could use smaller scraps in them – of course it takes more of them to make a quilt. 🙂
Crumb blocks are one of my favorite scrap blocks too. I find them a pretty versatile block. You cand use them side by side or with sashings of a solid color or you can use them like any other fabric in a traditional block. I went through a Sawtooth Star phase where I made/started a lot of quilts using the Sawtooth Star pattern. 6 1/2 inch crumb blocks make a great center for the stars. I made several quilts like that a few years ago. They were fun to make.
Your Arkansas Snowflakes look like a good scrap buster. Just keeping up with the scraps is a full time job, much less trying to make something from them. Enjoy your stitching time this week. Thank you for linking up this week.
Hi Kate,
Yes, the Arkansas Snowflakes are a great scrap buster. I really like how the finished blocks look together in a group too. Definitely, keeping up with scraps is a full-time job. It seems like the more scraps you use, the more there are. That said though, I love scraps. It’d be harder for me to part with the scrap bins than the yardage I have, I think. I enjoy working with the scraps a lot.
Thanks for hosting the linkup again this week. I expect you keep a lot of us motivated to quilt a bit every day, or as close to it as we can manage.
Pretty stars, they are a great pattern for using scraps. I love the thread cutter, I bought one for myself later this year, and it’s so handy while chain piecing!
Thank you for sharing and linking up 😉
Thanks for stopping by Frederique. I do like the stars. I’m partial to star patterns in general…but these are sized to use a lot of smaller scraps, which is especially nice. I love my thread cutter too. I use it ALL the time. I chain piece even when I’m sewing single blocks at a time, so I’m almost always chain piecing.
Thank you for hosting the linkup and for stopping by.
Fun scrap block!!! We quilters do love star blocks! My go-to scrap block this year for the rainbow scrap challenge has been a 36-patch of 2 1/2″ squares. They’re fast and simple, which is the way to use up scraps!!!
Hi Nancy,
Thanks for stopping by and saying hello! Yes, for sure it’s great to be able to use up scraps quickly and easily. The 36-patch of 2 1/2 inch squares would lend itself well to chain piecing and sounds like it would be an easy project to pick up when you have a few minutes to sew. The easy to pick up and easy to put down (able to put it down unfinished) is one of the things I like in a good scrap buster pattern. There are several I like and use…though I am kind of on the hunt for something new in 2024 – maybe.
What a great pattern to squeeze scraps into! Love your layout!
Thanks, Terry. It is a fun pattern to work with. I like that I can chain piece parts independently and then join units to unit to create the whole block. It makes it a nice easy block to work on whenever I have a few minutes, though it’s addictive too, and I sometimes start out thinking I’ll work on it for half an hour and I am still there two hours later.
Thanks for stopping by and saying hello!
I love the artistry of these quilts. In this particular one, for me, I am attracted to the bright star on the light patterned grey. A subtle yet compelling design.
Thanks for stopping by and saying hello! That you particularly like the stars on the gray is interesting to me. I’ve made a lot of these blocks and of course have laid them out and looked at them on the design wall or table (both white background). This time I laid them out on the ironing table cover which happens to be gray. I liked them better than I’ve liked them previously…I put it down to the blocks growing on me–but maybe it IS the gray background. 🙂
[…] period I did quite a bit of sewing, but I worked on scrap projects like the frugal blocks and the Arkansas snowflake blocks which are still far from finished […]