Using Every Last Scrap

The quilt I am working on requires a lot of squares… I mean a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lotta squares. For the size I want to make, I didn’t have enough squares to go around the border, so I decided to make more from the scraps.

When I was piecing and sewing the frames around the 9-patch blocks, I noticed that the larger two of the four strips was going to have excess that would need to be trimmed, and after sewing them on I used my rotary cutter to square it back up and left the scraps in a pile. Well, I was well aware that there was going to be a shortage of squares for the border because, well, I wasn’t thinking before starting this project exactly how much of everything I would need, and figured if need be I could always go find some coordinating fabric to make up the rest.

Then I started looking at those trimmed scraps a little more closely and found that if I put three of them together they were the same size as a square! ¡Muy fabuloso! I had a bunch of white squares I wouldn’t need anymore for this project, so I decided to take those leftover scraps and arrange them on the squares, making sure that they weren’t matching either in color or patterns. I then set my sewing machine to zig-zag and put the stitch on the widest setting and started sewing the scraps to the white squares. When all was said and done, I had an extra ten squares, which wasn’t enough to finish the border, but pretty close, and I figured I could make this work.

However, last night while I was piecing the rows together of the framed 9-patch blocks, I realized I had quite a bit more fabric scraps in the bag I bought it in from trimming the selvage off of some of the scraps I used to make the quilt to make them all the same size and figured I had enough there for at least another dozen squares, if not more. And so I began cutting them and got about three slices in with the rotary blade before I realized it was 9pm and Desperate Housewives was on. Alas, there are priorities, but at least I believe I’ve got enough to finish that alternating square border that originally drew me to this particular quilt pattern in the first place!