The last quilt had a border that wound up having a lot of leftovers since there was no bother in counting. Sometimes the temptation to just sew and have fun obfuscates the need to count carefully to prevent wasting of resources for the next quilt. It usually has a great advantage, but sometimes ends up with a lot of stuff piling up in clearview plastic storage containers, shoeboxes, ziplock (tm) bags, etcetera.
Here's a piece of the red and white border of the last quilt completed the other morning:
You may not be able to see the triangle shapes on the above white-on-white print due to the lack of acuity on cheap printers.
But this isn't really about thrift, it's about what could be, and I saw a pillow at first and have made enough squares to make a pillow top to match the quilt. Haven't decided yet.
Votes:
Make the quilt, then do another quilt:
Make another quilt now:
Please, just say below. This isn't a real contest, and if you're here viewing quilts, welcome, sign in and vote now! It's a great site and a lot of fun people post here.
Oh, here's a little explanation of how I work, now that we've seen other people's methodologies. Picking up 20,000 postage stamps and restacking them into another container really isn't much fun, especially if 52 pickup your older brother pulled on you once (after you agreed with a cross my heart to the consequences) gave you feelings of impatience. It was about as much fun as having a pigtail pulled on at school by the smartass behind you.
So, I purchased some of those plasticized drawers that are 2 or 3" high per drawer and 16 inches by 14 inches or there around to stack and store postage stamps cut out for later use. Each has about 3 drawers, and the first one has mainly 30s fabrics in it, but the second one was just for red and red and white postage stamp pieces. They all measure 1.75" (1 and 3/4 inches) and finish 1.25 (1 1/4) inches. I like them because you can get a few more details in the square if you are fussy cutting a 30s reproduction print, and a lot of other quilter fabrics. The large splashy prints are harder to categorize, so if you have those, you can always just make a couple of stacks for bizarre-world color schemas and make a quilt of them someday, or throw one in here and there for a little annoyance.
Methodology in Scan 1: white print shown with red behind it, hoping that the triangle chips can be seen that cannot be seen in the other white-on-white squares of the chip fabric. Scan 1 also shows a wafer-thin piece of red picked up cheap somewhere that you can see through, so it was backed with white batiste that brings it up to snuff with the 200-count quilter's cottons that are far more opaque. Also if the sheer was a polycotton (which most are) it reduces the smell if you press on the back piece of 100% cotton batiste which does not smell like a chemical plant, at least. I pinned the red, white and green print back so you could see the batiste backing. The others are 1.75" strips cut to be cross cut into 1.75" squares in the near future. A lot of my time lately has been spent trying to cut squares from strips made for the last quilt that just never got crosscut.
Scan 2 shows work progression from sewing the red 1.75" squares onto a white chip 1.75" strip, back to back, to be cut when the entire strip is adorned by 20 or more squares. One end was imperfectly printed, so I started where the perfect white triangular chips start. 6 white 2-patch rectangles are pictured then the red-white-red-white lengths of 4 pieces; then 8 piece patch, and finally, the 16-patch red and white checkerboard with charm pieces on it.
Scan 3 shows 32 patch rectangles in which two 16-patch checkerboard squares were shown together, and in the next post, there will be 3 more 32-patch rectangles. I'm going to leave them that way until I decide whether to just make the pillow sham to match the quilt, or go ahead and go for another baby quilt. I'm reluctant to do that with only a yard of white left, if that much.
