When you work full time, it’s a very slow process to complete quilts. There are just no all day quilting days even if you have a day off. Most of my quilts are made not only with scraps of fabric, but with scraps of time.
What? You never heard of a scrap of time? It is the few minutes it takes for the iron to heat up or the computer to boot up that you spend at the sewing machine with a couple of pieces of fabric to stitch. It is using parts from a second quilt as your leader and ender to keep the bobbin thread from making a nest on the back as you stitch the current quilt pieces together. The bonus of that is, not only parts of a second quilt are completed while you are working on the current one, but it also saves on thread. It is also laying out the precut strips that will make up the pieces of a quilt on the cutting board so that when you have a scrap of time you can quickly cut a few pieces for another quilt.
Here are a couple of pictures of Jeff’s scrap quilt that I told you about a couple of weeks ago. Here the blocks of the first two rows and part of the third row are stitched together. As of yesterday another row is also complete.
As I sew the pieces of the blocks together, these are the pieces of the next quilt that I’m using as leaders and enders. They are for a quilt called stacked bricks. I have quite a stack of these.
I alternate the two angles so I’ll have the correct number of each of the rows completed by the time I finish the top I’m currently working on. Cool, huh?
If you want to know more about leaders and enders, Bonnie Hunter of http://quiltville.blogspot.com/ has a book with quilts made from her leaders and enders. See her blog for more information.
What do you do with your scraps of fabric and time?
Here's to using those scraps to make something beautiful!
Until next time,
Lois
4 comments:
I am really like Jeff's quilt. The same but so different than the Quiltville quilt. I, too, am learning to use the leaders and enders. Keeping those little things cut ahead is quite a chore in itself.
Wow, beautiful quilt! I am so new into quilting, it always amazes me to see the creativity of quilting and patterns.
The leaders and enders work best when you already have precut strips and squares. I have boxes of 1-1/2", 2" and 2-1/2" strips and squares that I cut as part of the cleanup. A while back I went through several boxes of fabric and cut them into these sizes. All I had to do for the ones I'm using now is cut them into 5-1/2" lengths and cut some 1/4 square triangles.
Thank you for the comments, it's Katie isn't it? Hope when you get moved to San Francisco you'll get into quiltng more!
I like the concept of scrap time. I need to get more efficient at using those odd minutes. I always think of the time I work on hexagons as free time because it is time I would otherwise waste traveling, watching tv with empty hands etc. Scrap time is a little different. You get me thinking!
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