What I'm Doing With Vintage Scraps

Hello quilty friends!  As you know , I recently came across the most wonderful feedsack scrap quilt top.  I will finish this beauty one of these days!  All it needs is a back, quilting, and binding.

In the same store, I found baggies full of authentic vintage scraps dating all the way from the 30's and 40's up to the 60's.  I don't think these scraps are from the same quilter who made  the quilt in the picture above.  They are all completely different except for the red/white polka dots.

I've never sewn with real vintage fabrics before and I was fascinated with the different colors and designs from another era.

Now when I say I have scraps, we're talking SMALL pieces of fabric.  The largest shape I could get out of any of  them was a 4 1/2" square.   So I cut as many of those as I could.

You can tell from the color selection that these were probably the least favorite fabrics in the stash.  I ended up with 37 of those.

Then, from what scraps were left after I did that, I cut 2 1/2" inch squares.  I ended up with exactly 325 of those at last count.

Then last, but not least, I took all the remaining scraps and basically started creating crumb blocks with them.  Rather than trim the scraps into squares or rectangles, I decided to work with whatever shape they were and just start joining them together.  I trimmed off jaggedy edges to create a straight edge to join together, but other than that, I tried to cut off as little fabric as possible.  I still have more scraps I could put together if I wanted to, but the pieces are left are getting rather tiny and I don't know how much time I want to spend doing this.

Some of them I tried to connect like colors to like colors, like this . . .

Pink #1

Pink #2

Hmm, is this one green or blue?

This one mostly green . . .

A red one . . .

Most of the rest of the blocks are random scraps just thrown together.  

Whew!  This one is rather busy!

Before I started cutting squares, I threw a bunch of the scraps onto a large piece of solid peachish-orangish (tangerine?) fabric that I have and decided it went well with most of the fabrics and quite a few of them actually have this color or somewhat close to that color in them.  

So I decided to cut a bunch of 2 1/2" squares and made some four patches.  

At first I put two like squares together with two tangerine squares like this . . .

I realized I would quickly run out of "pairs" so decided to do the tangerine with random fabrics instead.

Still no plan yet.   I decided I needed to count up what I had of everything so far so I could start getting somewhat of a direction to head for.  

I have 31 tangerine 4 patches (4 1/2")

37 full size 4 1/2 inch squares

47 scrappy 4 1/2 inch squares

28 four patches of random 2 1/2" squares

If you're keeping track that is 143  4.5 inch squares all together.  OK now I'm starting to think about how I'm going to use them all.   I can't just sew them together because that would be an awfully chaotic mess and a little hard to look at!   I have quite a bit of the tangerine fabric left and I think I might use those squares as a checkerboard border like this . . .

This is how far I could get with 31 of them.  By making 4 more I can get a  40 inch square.  I have a lot of tangerine and quite a few 2 1/2 inch square left so I can enlarge that as needed.

OK, next I decided I would tackle the scrappy blocks.  To calm them down I am going to add solid colors to each one and make square in a square blocks like this . . .

I think I'm really going to like how this looks!  If you can't tell, I LOVE scrappy quilts!  I love the look of a quilt that reflects how they originally were put together with just any little scrap that was available to create something to keep warm with.  

I am making these blocks large enough so I'll end up with 6 inch blocks (unfinished).   Since I have 47 scrappy blocks and that's not divisible by anything.  I am going to make two more of those so I can have a 7 x 7 layout of square in a square blocks.   I'm not sure how the math is going to work out with the four patch border fitting around that, but I'll figure something out!

What to do with the random 4 patches and the 37 plain squares.  Hmmm!   I think I'll just set them aside for now until I get all my square in a squares finished.  

Whew!  That's what I've been making with my vintage scraps.  

If you didn't get a chance to read my last post, I am exploring uncharted waters for me by making a quilt out of my friend's wedding dress. 

 So far, all I've done with that is start to deconstruct the dress to figure out how much fabric I have to work with.  Those things are HARD to get apart!  It's been very interesting seeing just exactly how they were put together.  I'll share more about that in an upcoming blog post.

In the meantime, I have an exciting announcement which I'll blog more about later as well.  I've opened up an Etsy store called That's So Janice.  Thank you to my daughter Ashley for designing the logo!   

I need to declutter!!  Inventory will be mostly discontinued fabric (so I almost went with That's Sew Janice) but decided to avoid the sewing pun since I have other items as well.  I'll be adding a few new things every day.

Hope you'll visit !     

Linking to:

Quilting is More Fun Than Housework

So Scrappy

From Bolt to Beauty

Confessions of a Fabric Addict