January Finishes - Put Your Scraps to Work 2014

It's hard to believe that this is the last day of January. It has flown by in the blink of an eye, full of work, kids activities and a little bit of sewing. Today is also the first month of the Put Your Scraps to Work 2014 challenge and I hope you'll join me in showing off your scrappy sewing this month.

My plan for the month included a scrappy fabric basket (check) and a scrappy cushion (sadly no check).

I made good progress sorting out my scrap basket - I'm not quite finished, but almost there.

And I made 2 sets of scrappy blocks.

First up, I made these two QAYG blocks for Alison as part of her appeal for quilts for street children in Mexico city:

I did a version of a log cabin block with strips of increasing size. I would have liked to do a few more, but had to accept that my time is limited and that contributing something was better than having great intentions and ending up contributing nothing. I really like these cheery, happy blocks. I quilted them in an expanding square type pattern - you can see it better on the back of the block. I hope Alison can use these, and they definitely made good use of my scraps!

The last of my makes for the month were my Bee Blocks for Ruth in the Modern Irish Bee. These blocks used teeny tiny 1" squares so they were a little bit tricky, but fantastic to use up those tiny pieces of fabric you can't bear to throw out. The Kona Ash sets of the little scrap blocks perfectly, I can't wait to see what this quilt turns out like.

 

 
My aim for February is to use these orphan blocks I found in my scrap basket, and turn them into something lovely!

 So, lets see what you've been up to and what lovely scrappy makes you have for this month! Please link back to me in your post, and go visit some of the other peeps linking up. You have a week to link up so get writing :-) Don't forget to add your pics to the Flickr group, and to tag them on Instagram using the #putyourscrapstowork2014 hashtag.

An InLinkz Link-up

Great big scrappy fabric basket

The last 10 days have gone by in a bit of a blur. Returning to work is hard....it takes so much time to get used to the pace of a working day again, doing all the family stuff in the evenings and even having to travel for a couple of days for training. So crafting has been a bit hit and miss here in the last couple of weeks and I haven't gotten close to replying to emails unfortunately.

But I did manage to get one of this month's scrappy projects finished for my Put Your Scraps to Work challenge .....a lovely fabric storage basket made out of scraps, for my scraps. Seeing as the scrap pile was completely out of control, I needed something new to put them in and decided to divide them up by colours - cool, warm and neutrals & multicoloured/novelty. As I said previously, I really want my scrappy projects to be practical as well as pretty so a basket was a great project to start with.

 I meant to post progress pics of this, but what with the travel and the kids and falling asleep on the sofa within an hour of sitting down in the evenings, I just didn't get to. So here's a recap - you'll have seen some of these pics before if you follow me on Instagram or FB.

I started off just piecing random scraps together. It is improv in terms of the method - no plan, I just put pieces together - but I didn't go completely crazy and wonky, I kept it reasonably squared off to fit with the shape of the basket. Some of my fave scraps went into these panels; I love the hedgehogs, and the tree, all the dots. The bear and the whales and owls. I really had fun making it.

I decided to try matchstick quilting. It's pretty haphazard, not a straight line in there (I believe the official word is "organic"). I really love how dense it is. And how it turned out. I used Aurifil medium turquoise 50wt thread. I'm normally very boring with my thread colour choice, sticking to neutrals, but decided to give this a whirl and I have to admit I absolutely love it. The turquoise pops off it and gives the quilting an extra nice feel.

I used Nova's great pattern to make these. I did think a bit before buying it, as fabric baskets are not the most complicated thing in the world to make, and I've made them before. But I love how all the measurements are done for various sizes, and there are lots of options there that there are additional measurements for too. Well worth the few euro for it when I keep using it over and over again.

 

 I made the 9" basket and I could probably go up a couple of inches as my Expedit bookcase would take a bigger basket, and I certainly don't have all my scraps in here yet. Aren't those little scraps there pretty? I love looking at this from different angles. I keep seeing favourite prints. See that tiny bit of blue and red paisley over the navy Saffron Craig print with the birds? That paisley is a Tanya Whelan and one of my all time faves. I sadly put the tiny last bit I had in there....and then someone was selling it in the IG destash on Sunday night and now I have 3/4 yard of it again...hooray.

I used a few large scraps for the lining. Honestly, apart from the green dinos, none of them are prints I really like a whole pile, but I wanted to use them as I suffer from quilter's disease (I cannot throw out perfectly useable, if ugly, fabric) and they won't really be seen as I'm anticpating that this basket will most likely fill as fast as I can empty it. 

I am very pleased with this. Love how it turned out. And love how useful it is.

How are your scrappy projects coming along? Are you making progress? Don't forget I'll be posting a linky on the last day of the month for you to show off your makes. I had a few questions about the degree of finished-ness required to link up. This is a very relaxed kind of scrap challenge.I just want people to have fun and use up their scraps in the process. So blocks, quilt tops etc are all fine to link up. It doesn't have to be totally 100% finished (although it probably works best if you are finished a "stage" rather than right in the middle of piecing something).

Can't wait to see what you've been making :-)

Put Your Scraps to Work 2014: Are you in?

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I floated this idea in my 2014 goals post last week, and got loads of people interested. So I'm officially kicking off a scrap-busting challenge for 2014. Yay!

This is a really simple challenge. Here's what you need to do: Make at least 1 project from your scraps each month. Post it on your blog, and add your post to the linky I will post here on the last day of each month. You need to link back to me some way, either using the button above or some other type of link. I know not everyone has a blog - there's also a Flickr group (you'll find it here) where you can post pictures of what you have made, and if you're on Instagram, the hashtag is #putyourscrapstowork2014, so be sure to use that. I will have some spot prizes over the year for people participating (not just on the blog - IG and Flickr peeps too).

I've started a Pinterest board where I have Pinned loads of ideas for what you could make with scraps. I'll keep adding to this as the year goes on. It's here. I didn't worry too much about the Pins being linked to tutorials - some of them are just eye candy/inspiration type Pins. I would really like to make this a communal board because I think it would be great to have one big board that loads of people Pin ideas to - everyone sees different things. But apparently I have quite a lot of Pinterest followers (who knew? I certainly didn't!!) which makes inviting people a bit more difficult so if you'd like to be part of the communal board, please email me (fairyfacedesigns at gmail dot com) with your Pinterest ID and I will (figure out how to) add you.

Ok....so that's kind of it on the detail front. My plan for my scraps is to, as much as possible, make practical stuff that I will use from them. I might make one or 2 decorative mini quilts, but mostly I want to make things that actually work in my house, have a practical value. Obviously, practical does not rule out pretty :-) My plan for this month is to make a cushion for the living room, and some fabric storage baskets (to organise the horrendously large bin of scraps). Actually, the very first task is to finish sorting the scraps. Next month...well, I'll think about that then. I'd love if we could get a good big group working on this together, so please, don't be shy, spread the word!!

So, you in? And whatcha making first?