I have real scrap guilt, and the 4 large lidded buckets under my A0 printer which are overflowing with scraps will confirm my story.
I recently undertook some batch cutting (3 Torrens and 2 Glebe Pants)- my scraps looked quite good together and I didn’t have room in my bins to add these in so I started piecing them together since that felt better than just guiltily throwing them out (or storing them in the dark for 2-3 years.
Improv Piecing
Everything I know about improv piecing I learnt from this post about Emily’s Grainger Coat. Clearly things being totally square and on the grain was not my major concern. I started by piecing together bits that I could get together (I started with the circus tent bit in the middle). I ended up with lots of bits which had 3 or 4 bits joined, some of them were more square or rectangular than others, and eventually I used my quilting ruler to square up the pieces and I started putting them together.
I didn’t pay much attention to the composition of the pieces- there was no attempt to balance it or make it look ordered.
It wasn’t until the very end that I started to try and make a specific shape to fill in a gap that was left (the top right is the bit that got made last and it has the smallest bits).
Below is a close-up of the circus-tent zone and a little checkerboard intersection which was quite pleasing (and yeah, I definitely did try to get them to intersect nicely but not hard enough that it doesn’t feel like a happy coincidence).
What will it become? No idea. Maybe a wall hanging or a cushion cover for the couch? The linen is nice for clothes but not particularly heavy-weight so I wouldn’t want to use it for something that gets heavy wear (like a bag).
