I advise a sewing club at the high school where I serve as the librarian. We get lots of donations from grandparents who are downsizing or people who just don’t have time for crafting. Shocking, I know.
Every school year, I like to have a charity project I can work on with my students. So last school year, I found two packs of the same jelly roll collection in the donated fabric. Then I trolled through my local public library’s Hoopla collection and found the perfect pattern in “Jelly Roll Quilts in a Weekend: 15 Quick and Easy Quilt Patterns” by Pam Lintott and Nicky Lintott. I chose the Tutti-Frutti pattern and started piecing the blocks. But no one seemed interested in quilting this year. Making their own clothes and cosplay was the theme. I hope they get interested in quilting again.
Then, one of my favorite quilters, Pat Sloan blows my mind with her blog post, “Make a free quilt while doing other things.” I’ll add a link to her post at the end of mine.
This was a total game changer for me. I hate wasting things and had a bag of scraps left over from a previous quilt the club made. So I took her advice and, instead of tossing the triangles I cut from the snowball units of the Tutti-Frutti quilt, I made half square triangles (HST)! All it took was drawing an extra line and sewing an additional seam. I took the left over triangles (red and white) from the other quilt and made them into hour glass blocks and combined those with the HSTs to make tiny sawtooth stars!
Ta-da! Two quilts are now in progress, one entirely from leftover scraps. I brought both projects home thinking I would have time this summer to piece Tutti-Frutti, but alas no. The units to make the blocks are all done as you can see below:
Once the quilt is pieced I’ll send it to my contact at Quilts Beyond Borders. The last quilt I sent to them went to the Ukraine. When I finish the other quilt I’ll donate to the school auction.
Maybe, if I feel up to it after my Carpal Tunnel surgery this week, I can tackle this or maybe I’ll just knit this week. Whatever I work on it will not involve cutting or anything that puts pressure on my hand.
I hope this post inspires you to find ways to use those sewing crumbs you have stashed somewhere. Maybe you already do. Tell me in the comments your favorite way to use up scraps (knitters, you can join in too).
Yours in (soon to be literally) stitches,
Dawn, The Stitching Coach
Links to content mentioned in this post:
https://davidandcharles.com/product/jelly-roll-quilts-in-a-weekend/
https://blog.patsloan.com/2022/02/make-a-free-quilt-while-doing-other-things-1.html
https://quiltsbeyondborders.wordpress.com/
