Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Green

This month's colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is green.


Here are my green fat quarters to choose from.

 I enjoy a variety of textile crafts but haven't done any patchwork and quilting for quite a while.  These fat quarters (or should I say partial fat quarters) are leftovers from various small patchwork and applique projects.  When I got them out I found this

It's a wonky flying geese pattern.  I don't remember doing it but I must have done.  My intial reaction was great - I can continue this and make it into a large block to go with the red one I made last month.  I don't want to make all of the blocks the same so auditioned the pieces next to each other and was happy.

I merrily cut squares from my fat quarters for the base but couldn't quite work out how to cut the pieces to form the sky as they wouldn't be proper squares.  Then I thought - hang on a minute.  The reason I joined this challenge was to use the odd bits of the fat quarters where squares, strips and other shapes had previously been cut.  By cutting fabric for the flying geese this would create more odd bits not use the ones I already had!

I changed tack, and went back to the fat quarters, opened them out and cut the odd bits off.  Over the last couple of weeks I've come across new terms such as crumbs.  I don't have any boxes of crumbs or scraps, at least my take on these words.  My cut up fat quarters may be scraps to others but they are still fat quarters to me.  The tiny pieces I would think of as crumbs have either been thrown away or are still attached to the main piece by thin strands of fabric.  These are the crumbs I cut from my red fat quarters last month but struggled to use them.

There are lots of curved shapes in there from a flower making project.  I'd like to thank Cathy Tomm for pointing me towards Bonnie Hunters crumb tutorial. Unfortunately, I've not had time to have a go with my red crumbs as we're now onto green and I've been making tags for Tag Tuesday as well as other projects I'm in the middle of.  I still want to make something from these red bits though.

With my green fat quarters I didn't have a crumb problem.  They'd been cut but most had what I would call tails which I could cut off and use as scraps.

Looking at my greens I wondered how they would look together - there are dark ones, light ones, yellowy ones, bluey ones, greyey ones, grids, circles, pea green.  Some I liked, some I didn't.  To me, they don't go together.  I wondered about  putting them into groups for likeness and make several small blocks but decided to use them randomly.  It seemed easier to do it that way and other scrappy quilts I've seen have a mix of fabrics I wouldn't necessarily have chosen to put together but they seem to work well.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as the saying goes.  If it looked a mess when it was finished I could put it down to experience.  They were only small bits of fabric I'd had for ages after all so I wouldn't have wasted any money.  Surely being in my stash for that long could be seen as a waste by some.

I've used the general technique from the crumb tutorial matching pieces by size to put together.  I didn't want to be worried by scale and tonal values but I think instinct kicked in so there aren't clumps of similar pieces together.   In the beginning, I had several little blocks and I wondered if they would have sides the same length to make one piece.  I busily kept stitching and quite soon I realised that a couple of my blocks had grown to 9 inches along so decided that this would be my final block size.  In the end I'd made four blocks and have very few bits left over so I'm pleased with what I have created - all from the odd bits.  Today I saw the term poverty piecing.  I thought it was something to do with making quilts for charity but it comes from the idea of not being wasteful and putting all good fabric to a good use.  I think my blocks qualify for this term - well, once they have been made into an item they will.

I haven't decided what to make from the blocks yet, ideas kept floating round my head and I've been inspired by lots of blogs I've been reading.  For the moment I'll keep the blocks separate whilst I create more in different colours and create an ideas file.

I'm going to work on other projects now but am looking forward to see what next month's colour is.