Brown!

When I asked which color block would be the one I was going to make next, the color Brown was NOT on my radar. My pal Tracey suggested it, and as soon as she did I knew I had to do it.

As usual, Tracey has the best ideas!

Black!

I said I would make blocks from the scraps in the little bins, and I actually have a little bin JUST for scraps of fabrics with a black background.You didn't think I was NOT going to make a block from those scraps now, did you?

This is the 19th block, and I need 20 for my quilt. Can you guess what color the last block will be?

Gray!

Here's a gray block. For a long time it was hard to find a good selection of grays. Usually I could find one or two, but it is only recently that I've seen a nice selection of grays in quilt shops. A couple of  these grays are six or more years old.

Teal

This is the blue-green (or teal) block.

Cream

This is the cream block. It is fabrics with all cream backgrounds.

These are the nine blocks I have made so far this year.

Yes, this will be a large quilt, though it won't be a bed quilt, it will be a quilt for a couch, and I expect it to be about 60 x 75 inches or so.

Black & White block

This is the black and white block. When I was sewing it up I wasn't quite sure, but seeing it from a distance I am very happy with it. It will join the other color blocks in the quilt I am making from the scraps in the little bins.

Sunny Yellow

It's easy to sew up a lot of scraps to make one of these blocks. It's a bit harder to sew up ONLY what's needed and not have a lot of of "chunks" left over.  In other words, these blocks (which are about 17" square or so) take a lot less fabric than you think they will.

I am happy with this sunny yellow block.

Orange!

The other night when I was sorting scraps, the orange bin was the fullest, (especially after making the Chicken quilt, with all the oranges in that) so I made this orange block.  Love, love love!

Twelve!

Woo Hoo! I like these a lot. This is going to be a fun quilt.

*Sorry for the minimal posts lately, I've been really busy. More details later!

Red One

I love red.

Medium Green

I am having a lot of fun with these.

This is Medium Green. I had made a light green (or yellow-green), so now I have a "medium" green. Never underestimate Christmas fabrics when looking for good greens.

Medium Blue

Making these blocks, with all the "extra" colors in the fabrics, makes me realize how we limit ourselves when we choose fabrics that "go" together. This block has a lot of different blues, warm ones and cool ones, and ones that veer to green and some that are duller blues, but here they all coexist wonderfully.

Update...
My friend Megan has left a question in the comments and I'm going to answer it here. Megan, when a fabric has both, say yellow and blue in it (as in your example) I determine which color is dominant and store it in that box. So if I'm looking at the fabric from a distance and it reads "blue" or "yellow" then the decision is easy.  I have bins for "WHITE" and I have one for "WHITE AND" which is where I store the fabrics that are colors with a white background. Lots of novelties end up in this bin, I do the same thing with Black. One bin for "BLACK", and one for "BLACK AND." I don't stress out too much about where the bits end up, and if some fabrics fall into two bins, then so be it. These are scraps, after all and some things just aren't worth stressing out about. I do have a "MULTI" bin and one for "CATS." Use whatever works for you.

As for your comment about a lot of quilters using only fabrics from the same "line" in a quilt, I totally agree. I feel those quilts are bland and boring. I always get strange looks when I shop for fabrics, and bring a lot of seemingly unrelated things together. As you know, I'll mix Asians, batiks, Marcia Derse, Kaffes, and Westminster fabrics together with Jinny Beyers, Tula Pink, or whatever else I can lay my hands on. Except for the big big ones, I don't know the names of the hot designers, and that doesn't bother me one bit.

How my Mémère Made Quilts

My grandmother made quilts. They were scrappy quilts, and she never used a pattern. She made them from the clothes she and my mother made for me, my brothers and sister and our cousins. The quilts were made from the leftover fabric from our skirts and blouses, pajamas, jumpers, shorts and tops; from tablecloths, placemats, tote bags and costumes.

They weren't quilted, they were tied with crochet cotton, and the backings were sheets. The quilts were lightweight and washed like a dream. This was beneficial, as they were utility quilts in every sense of the word. We used them on picnics, we brought them to the beach, we watched fireworks lying on them. We used them to wrap my Mother's artwork when we had to deliver it to various galleries. On our beds, we put them on top of the bed's flat sheet, and under the blanket so they were rarely seen. On hot summer nights, they were perfect to sleep under, just enough to keep out the draft, but light enough not to be too hot.

My Mémère never bought new fabric to make the quilts. She always used what she had.  Later, when she had Macular Degenerative Disease, and couldn't see, I asked her how she made them, because I couldn't figure out how she put them together. They weren't made in traditional blocks.

This is one of the last quilts Memere made. This was made in the 1980's.

"I started cutting squares, but that didn't last long," she said.  "It took too much time to cut them out, and I still had fabric left over that I wanted to use. So I just took two pieces of fabric and sewed them together."

 "If one piece was too big, I'd just cut it off. If I didn't like the pieces I sewed together, I'd just use them someplace else." Mémère even chain-pieced them.

I asked how she got the pieces square. "Oh I cut them with a pair of scissors."

"So after I sew those, and pressed the seams, I did it again using the pieces I had."

 "I kept sewing until I got a big chunk and then I put it aside until I had a lot of big pieces and then I sewed them together until it got to be the right size for the bed."

Did she measure? No, she'd lay the big sections on the bed and move them around until they were the way she liked. She'd cut things off if they were too big, and add the pieces to other sections that were too small. She wanted to use every scrap.

Sound familiar?

It should. I've heard the same process described by Tonya Ricucci, Gwen Marston, and in several "tutes" for "made fabric" and many other places.

Was my Mémère the first true "Liberated Quiltmaker?" Of course not, she was just trying to make do with what she had.

My Mémère died in 2001, well before I took up quiltmaking again (after a 22 year break), so I never had a chance to tell her that she was a quilt maverick.

She would have laughed and told me I was silly, but every time I make one of these color blocks (using the technique she taught me) I think of her.

The One Hour Challenge

Last night I got home from work and heated up the oven to cook a baked potato. While I waited for the oven to pre-heat, I brought out the trash and threw a load of wash in the laundry. What to do while I waited for the potato to cook? (The rest of dinner simply needed to be reheated in the microwave, so no cooking was necessary.) What could I do in an hour?

Could I take the little pieces in this scrap bin,

and surround this piece of white fabric to make a 16-1/2" block by the time the baked potato was ready?

There was only one way to find out.

I selected fabrics, and ironed them as they came out of the bin.

I sewed the pieces into pairs, and then sewed pairs together and kept going until I was done.

It took me slightly longer than an hour, but it did provide quite a diversion.  The next question was did this make a dent in the amount of fabric in the little bin?

 

Answer: Not much.