I spent some time between Christmas and New Years clearing out my sewing closet of scraps, and WHOA….! These stacks needed to be made into something useful or be thrown out! Soooo, I made six baby/ lap size quilts (one is not shown here) and have enough scraps for at least four more.
People ask me all the time what to do with their leftover pieces or orphan blocks, so I thought I would share what I did in hopes that it inspires some creative ideas! I have a lot of leftover blocks and pieces of blocks made with the 60 degree angle (because of my ruler of course:), The nice thing is these shapes all go together with little filler blocks here and there.
I did this baby quilt with leftover “wreathed hexie” blocks from the Hexie Hot Air Balloons quilt. I offset them with 4½” triangles of “blue sky” making it easy to sew together in rows. Here is a tutorial from a few weeks back on how to make these blocks.
You’ll recognize this one from its big brother the Hollow Star. I had a few extra star points and floated them with big 8½” triangles of white background, and added a couple orphan strips to one end to make it interesting and, voila!
This little cutie is made entirely from ends of strips that weren’t used up in the Hollow Star quilt. I cut the strips down to 3½” and then cut 6½” trapezoids from them. Most strips barely had enough to get one trapezoid, but the end result is pretty cute and very scrappy!
You can see here how I assembled the trapezoids into rows and sewed them together.
Of course the Woven Jewelbox scraps made for a great little quilt, I just sewed blocks together until each one measured 8½” and then assembled them into rows. Not all these blocks came from the same quilt, but the colors were similar enough that I could mix and match.
I did the same with even more random block selection with this one… Only this time, all my blocks made the cut at 6½”. If you have a selection of blocks at random sizes, you can cut them all down to match the smallest one and sew them together, or sew a few together to make a bigger block and work from there.
Last but not least is the mini version of Big Sky Bloom, this quilt is the sweetest thing in full size, but I had just enough leftover blocks to make an itsy bitsy version. I cut the petals and leaves down to 6½”, then cut the sky triangles to 3½”.
Have you ever played around with scraps till you came up with something? If not, you should try it! I hope this gives you a little encouragement :)
Happy Sunday everyone!
Krista
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