Scrap Management
One of the magic moments of quilting is realizing that any
fabric plays well with another as long as something ties it all together.
I spent at least 18 months convincing myself of this very
fact.
Finding fabrics that work well together when I did not
purchase fabrics for something specific has always been the bane of my creative
existence. I have bought tons of fabric
in my lifetime and I have made most of my choices solely on the way the fabric looks. I like the color, or I like the texture. I rarely look at the pattern, what I am after
is a color value. Many times my foray
into a fabric store was to purchase a color that was missing from what I had in
my cupboard. I seem to use up some
colors faster than others. I wonder why!
My love affair with fabric is a mystery to me sometimes and
I worry that I have gotten in over my head.
When I want to start a new project I usually find a block I like and
then I sit down with my EQ7 program and design a quilt top so I can do the math
and know how much fabric I need. Since
scrap quilts are my favorite, I want to know ahead of time how many fabrics to
pull. If there is a focus fabric I have
it on the table to see if what I pull works with it. If I don’t have a focus fabric, I make sure
the quilt I am designing will have sashing or a border I can use to tie all the
scrappy fabrics together.
There always seems to be something left over so I will cut
it smaller and put it in a box to use in another project. As the pieces become smaller they still have
usefulness, I just have to be more creative!
Trying to use it up becomes scrap management and I like to
design projects that the little pieces can star in.
And I will always remember the quilting lady who said "If you don't like your fabric you just havn't cut it small enough!"
ReplyDeleteI think you are so very clever with your quilting.
ReplyDeleteI love those two bottom quilts, but not the top one.
The diagonal stripes hurt my eyes, but the colours do work well together.