Ok, I admit it. I almost did the most sacrilegious action a scrapper can do... I almost pitched two buckets of scraps. I'm bowing my head in shame, my friends. Last year I had the urge to purge (I'm very dangerous in these moods) and I donated 10 boxes of fabric to our local Doctors Without Borders group. Eying these two tubs of bits spanning decades.... Hmm... Why not? But something stayed my hand.
It was fate. Two months later I stumbled across this great book called Strips & Strings by Evelyn Sloppy. Now, I've never had an urge to make string quilts, but these were amazing! I even saw one made up at a local quilt shop.
Evelyn is brilliant. Most of the quilts I'm interested in require you to gather hundreds of strips ranging from 1" to 2.5" by 9" long. She has so many fascinating techniques involving straight sewing and creative cutting to make so many cool triangle variations!
So, I've spent the last few weeks picking out strips from my buckets and ruthlessly cutting through decades of fabrics (thinking to myself... what was I thinking?!?) Luckily Bonnie Hunter's advice kept scrolling through my head: if the fabric is still too ugly then you haven't cut it up small enough! Even my Millenium fabric "made the cut"!
I also found this to be a great way to finish off those remaining strips from my jelly rolls and honey buns. Even those leftover pieces of layer cakes cut down to a nice 9-inches. And, after trimming my strips, if the leftovers don't cut down to 2.5" square or 1 1/4" strips (for my Texas Log Cabin quilt), then out it went!
This is an awesome project to work on 15 minutes a day.... And we all know how much we can get done, don't we?
Elisa
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