Past & Present

So I have been pledging my next three months of clearing up my UFOs but what about current projects?

Guess what, I finished another Princess quilt - this is the one I made with all the lovely wee ready cut patches that I won in a recent giveaway from Nellie's Niceties. These were tucked into the parcel that held the main prize of a really sweet cushion and I also got a sizeable chunk of similarly themed fabric that I have used on the  back of this wee quilt. The cut patches were 5" x 2 1/2" and I decided to patch them together in a brick like fashion.

and the back, cute, isn't it?

I made Bee a Brit Stingy blocks for Charlotte, our July Queen Bee. She has asked for Courthouse Steps and has a great tutorial on her blog for ensuring an accurate block.

Recently, a friend brought me back a wee pack of Harris Tweed from her holiday - I spent a fun few hours the other day playing about at improv piecing them with the contents of a scrap pack from Umbrella Prints & some Essex linen. I had bought these scraps with the intention of entering their competition but totally mixed up the dates and left it too late. So my playing has resulted in two panels that might become one. Not sure yet....this is one of them,

Now I bet there are one or two of you reading this who are thinking, what about the re-organisation Sheila??

Well, ok, I did it, I got really stuck in to going through my untidy stash.

So, my stash was housed, by colour, in theses Samla boxes from Ikea. What was irritating me was the scrappy chunks that were mixed in with new pieces, how every time I searched through a box looking for a particular piece I would pretty much ignore the untidy, mis-shapen pieces, some of which had been hanging about - a long time. I changed my rotaryblade and started in, one box at a time over several days. You might be interested to know how I cut my scrappy scraps. Fat quarters and anything that could be cut into almost but not quite, a fat quarter got put back into its box. Anything else was ironed, and cut into 6.5" squares (or strips), 5" charms (or strips), 4.5"; 3.5"; 3"; 2.5"; 2" squares & strips, and 1.5" strips. I became better at efficiently cutting pieces and knowing which sizes I would achieve from a piece of fabric. As I stood during these cutting sessions I would daydream about all the scrappy projects that I saw myself creating..........but first, how to store them? I used quite a few plastic containers from food & veggie purchases, you know, like mushroom boxes. Still not absolutely sorted, still searching for the ideal plastic box, but I have found the pre cuts a new home - in a narrow wee alcove in my sewing room there is just enough room for an old Ikea Benno CD unit - I didn't use it for all that much before, but now I will be storing all my new pre cuts there.

 

and the bigger pieces? Well, thay have all gone back into their boxes and had neat new labels made using one of my Go dies............I know, I have already been accused of having too much time on my hands -

I am going to try so hard to be tidy and hopefully cut new scraps as I acquire them as I work on a project.

Famous last words??