What to do with these little scarps??

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I'm working on a block of the month quilt. Pam Bono designs. I have mixed feelings about the way the pattern and directions work. First, you buy a lot of fabric. Then, you rotary cut strips for the block, and these strips are cut into squares or rectangles. Only squares and rectangles are used. These are sewn together, and you cut almost half the square off, leaving a diagonal seam. The results are fairly accurate, and the last 18" block I did had over 60 pieces in it, this one will have 80 one inch squares alone, not counting the other pattern pieces, probably well over a hundred. :-/

Here is my question: I bought nice fabric, and there are lots of beautiful pairs of triangles, most about one to two inches on the short sides. There are also many tiny triangles, I'm saving those for papermaking, I guess. What can I do with the usable sized triangles? I cannot stand the amount of waste this method is causing!

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), April 15, 2002

Answers

Lots of patterns are really written to sell fabric, not make the item in the most cost-efficient way possible. I don't sew a whole lot (neither time nor cost-effective for me for most things) for this reason. I know that some reasons for the extra fabric might have been 1)ease of cutting, and 2)everything needs to be cut on the grain.

Could you make little stuffed fabric "gift tags" out of the bigger triangles, using a permanent pen to write the recipient's name? Or bean bags to sell at a church bazaar or something like that?

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), April 16, 2002.


Rebekah, I know just what you are saying. It is so much easier to use the Square "tag" method than to worry about sewing on those tricky triangles! So, I have a lot of them too! You can just sew them together and make 1/2 square tri's and then square them up? Of course that doesn't mean you like that particular combo of colors I know. I am considering trying the "Snippets" book just to use them up! Another thing I am "thinking about" is to make "Crazy Squares" out of them. I am able to use some of them in Foundation Piecing as I love to do that stuff,but the amount of those little leftover tri's you can use this way is limited. I hope some one out there has some ideas, just can't throw them away! We are hopeless! LOL LQ

-- Little Quacker (carouselxing@juno.com), April 16, 2002.

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