SCRAP PLAY!

I was photographing all my SIZZIX die quilts recently, (not enough hours in the day, might be time to have a computer person come help me) so I can add them to my website page for inspiration for those who purchase the dies.  Looking at all that pattern and color, always gets my head spinning...  I immediately afterwards cut out more bow tie pieces so I continue to work on my Christmas version...

Friday night, we drove to our house on long island, and I thought, YAY! I will just randomly play with the Clamshell Sizzix die that I had, and have not used. I thought would be nice to play and just sew a random top together, except when I got to my home, I realized I had taken my sewing machine to NYC for Quilters Take Manhattan to accommodate more students, and didn't return it to my house!  OOPS!  Now machine sewing for me!

So, I did at least play with the clamshell, by pulling large scraps from my three large scrap bins!

It's great fun, and an awesome challenge to make your random fabrics work well together! You do keep your scrap right?  Random sized scraps, all my cuttings, anything smaller then a fat quarter get tossed in my large clear rubbermaid bins... I come back to them later and can mix many years of collected fabrics back into my scrap quilts.

These same fabrics keep appearing in many of my quilts, as these are fabrics I've collected for 15-20 years! At first when putting them randomly on my wall,  the colors look pretty dull.

But by continuing to cut and dig through the scraps, you start to see a pattern to the kind of colors you continually buy. For me, red yellow pink and blue, with an increasingly amount of ORANGE!  But whose complaining about that! YUM! Not me!  Look how nicely the orange and reds make this pop! Yellows are being lights as well as that giant red/white polka dot!

I've worked through three large scrap bins, and now I will have to go back to NYC and hit the 12 other scrap bins I have, so that I can continue to make this quilt grow to a king size.

I will be piecing these 9.5" unfinished clam shells on the machine.  NOT BY HAND.  Yes, it is possible to do so.
If you've learned curved pricing from me, you know it's possible! You just need to learn how to handle the first row... (later)

My Sizzix dies, and other Sizzix dies (such as this large clamshell)  is such a great tool to have for Scrap busting!  I can cut, cut cut, 8 layers at a time, and then have a massive PARTS DEPARTMENT to play and design with.

I'm pleased with this so far. and think that when we are here for winter break, this is what I will be sewing on!

My husband even walked in, and said," WOAH! I love that! "
A keeper!!! (my hubby and my quilt)

;-)