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Leftovers Print
Using up leftover scraps.

Ingredients


Cutting board of some kind. (Be warned, start quilting and a whole world of things you didn't know you needed will open up in front of you! Do you have any idea how many different sorts of pins you can buy?!) Rotary cutter and quilting ruler, a two inch one is wonderful! Yes scissors would work but I suspect you will be defeated after a few inches. Sewing machine
And this a drawer full of leftovers. Take your pick!

Method


Measure and cut out a two inch square, and another and another and another. At this point you will need music, birdsong, the sound of the sea or a good play on the radio. Relax, let your mind wander, keep cutting.
If your leftovers are a bit bigger, you can make a neat pile and cut out several at a time. Hurrah!

It can help to iron the larger pieces first, oh and wash them, I didn't, I don't. One day I will be caught out by this but hey, life is short. What you will end up with is a bright, slightly crumpled square of blocks. I can't resist laying them out to see that the colours work, even though on this scale nearly all bits of fabric will work together (because in theory this will have lots of friends and become a quilt).

Flip the pieces of one row onto the next. Right side to right side.

Sew them together down one side using a 1/4" seam. This is called chain piecing. You just feed them all through the sewing machine in a long line.

You could feed them all though in one long chain and cut them at the end but I'd get in a terrible tangle so I just did them row by row.

Open them up, then put two pairs of chains right sides together and sew them together down one side. Keep joining these chains together so you end up with a block of two inch squares sewn together along either all the vertical or all the horizontal edges.

Now I iron! Hot iron and flatten the seams all in one direction.
Next we have to sew together the other edges. Use the same technique but in the other axis, of folding them together right side to right side and sew down using a 1/4" seam allowance. Work your way across the block, checking and straightening the edges together as they go through the sewing machine.

Iron again making sure the seams all lie neatly. Shocking this ironing thing but unavoidable when it comes to quilt making.
Ta da! Finished, except that mine isn't! I need a twelve inch square so I will need an eight by eight grid of squares. It will measure twelve and half inches because it will need the seam allowance all the way around.

What next? Well I'm doing a block swap with someone who could be in foreign parts like Europe, America or England and whenever I have a bit of time, feel stressed and need something peaceful to do or the scrap drawer starts to overflow, I'll make another one. One day I'll have a memory quilt made of all the fabric I've ever used in all the quilts I've ever made but not yet.