Lucie The Happy Quilter's Blog

There are only a few hours to go now. My family is spread all over the world at this point in time. My hubby has already seen the New Year in and my mother will be seeing the New Year a few hours after I do here in the UK. However far and wide we’re all spread out I wish everyone a wonderful 2013.

My Sarah and I headed out this morning to the supermarket. Unlike Mother Hubbard I wanted to start off the New Year with plenty of fresh healthy food in my cupboard. I’ve got a chilled bottle of Canada Dry Slimline Ginger Ale to celebrate this evening!

I worked on a little project this afternoon. I know exactly what you’re thinking; what else is new………. Well I saw something on the internet a little while ago that I thought would work rather well for Use up Your Scraps month. I had some scraps leftover from another scrap project. Did you know that you end up with scraps from making a scrap quilt? When you start using up your scraps you’ll see for yourself! So this little project is a Quilt as You Go mini quilt. I cut out a scrap of wadding approximately 15” square and a scrap of calico a little bigger. I layered them together. Then I rotary cut strips from my scraps; the strips were anywhere between 1-3/4” to 2-1/2” wide. The centre square was 2-1/2”. I placed the square in the centre; I just eyeballed it – no measuring.

Then I placed the first strip right sides together on the right hand side of the centre square lining the edges up and leaving an overlap top and bottom. Sew it in place. Next I flipped the strip over and finger pressed and then topstitched down the length in the centre of the second strip.

I just carried on in this fashion until the wadding was covered. I finished this job by squaring the block off and added binding. I have a few other ideas about how to take this technique a little further. I think this technique would be great to use for the following: table mats, mug rugs, table runners, bags, cushion covers, sewing machine dust covers and many more. Now I pieced mine as a log cabin but you could use this technique as a strip or even as a crazy. You could cut your strips all the same width or you could do like I did and use a variety of widths. Your centre square could be a rectangle; and that centre could be a half square triangle block or a four patch that’s leftover from another project. The possibilities are endless. I’m really excited about Use up Your Scraps month. I quite often set myself challenges but this one will be quite interesting. Tomorrow I plan to take a photo of the two scrap bins I plan to dive into to make all my projects next month. I have a couple of other bins in the loft which I may drag out if need be.

I quite enjoyed my hour of play in the sewing room this afternoon. I think tomorrow may be a quiet day for us in Happy Longarm Quilter Land so perhaps I will be able to spend a little time messing around with this QAYG technique again. I’ll let you know if I learn anything else.

So for this evening, this very happy longarm quilter will be working on a hand pieced Double Wedding Ring that I started last summer. Whatever you may be doing this New Year’s Eve, I hope you have a great time. Until you read me again,

Happy stitching. ♥ ♥