I’m trying to tackle my spring cleaning bit by bit. In this case, it’s keeping all my bits of fabric organized! A few months ago, I spent an entire night going through the mess of my scrap bin at home. I ironed, sorted everything by colour and then tied them up in bundles. Having an organized scrap bin has been the key to all the improv piecing I’ve been doing. I almost exclusively use scraps for my improv work. Now that my scraps are organized, I can grab the bundles of colours I want to work with and away I go!

My scraps are pieces I’ve collected from my clothing, quilting and other projects. Lucky for me, my scrap bin is also filled with scraps I’ve collected from many of YOU! If you’ve left behind a little bit of fabric at the workroom after a class that I didn’t have, I may have snatched it for my collection. Some of the smallest pieces are just two inches long and I have to say, I totally feel justified in keeping tiny pieces of very ‘rare’ or coveted fabrics.

Do you guys keep a scrap bin at home? Do you obsessively save every little bit?

The other part of my spring cleaning is my actual fabric stash. I’m partway through organizing, ironing and folding that. Once I’m done, I’ll take some photos to share with you. Fabric photography is one of my favourite things to do! (Can you tell?)

I’ve been patchworking every Sunday, but for the last ten weeks have been focusing on my Quilt Sampler 2 homework. The class just finished last Thursday, so I’ll post up photos of our finished quilt tops this week.

Yesterday, I spent a few hours ironing and organizing my fabric stash at home. It’s gotten a bit messy and also spread out over the house, so I wanted to wrangle it into one location. It’s so fun to re-discover forgotten fabrics and make things all tidy. Handling all my fabrics, really got me inspired to work with some with new colour palettes.

I’ve really been in the mood for some improv patchwork, so last night I started by using some scraps of purple nani IRO double gauze and threw in other scraps of dark grape-y purple, navy and light blues. I wanted to keep it fairly simple, but kept adding more and more scraps. It’s hard to stop, once you get going! I built two separate, but similar blocks so that they would be the right size for me to make myself a travel hoop bag.

Tonight I’m going to baste the two blocks and start doing some simple hand quilting on them. I’ve been missing having a little hand work project, so this is going to be perfect!

Happy Holidays! I’m actually still super busy, so I haven’t had lots of down time yet. I’m really looking forward to a quiet New Year’s weekend. I’m still working away on some of my ‘holiday/new year’ gifts!

In the midst of holiday sewing, I made time for my new Sunday routine. This block was inspired by the leftover scraps from a gift I am making using Kona Charcoal. I rarely use solids in patchwork, but I love how this turned out.

I’m trying out a new weekly routine where I dedicate Sunday nights to sewing and to doing some improvisational patchwork or other type of patchwork. No pressure to make anything from these blocks, but just time to play around with colour, form and fabric. So far I’ve been using scraps for these blocks and it’s giving me so many ideas for colour palettes, possible larger quilts and some smaller projects I want to try out. I’m absolutely loving the magical things that are happening when I sew with no plan.

I had a marathon sewing night on Sunday. I pulled out my bin of fabric scraps and started working on some Christmas gifts from a new pattern I bought. I’ll show you the results as soon as I put the finishing touches on what I made. I was having so much fun playing with all my scraps and sewing improvisational patchwork, that I kept going until the wee hours of the morning. (um… 4:30am!)

A few months ago, I actually spent a night organizing my scrap bin by colour. This made the patchwork process so much easier, since I had little bundles of each colour that I could just choose from. As I was working away on my Christmas gifts, I started thinking about making a little patchwork block that was based on the colour wheel. I decided to do a half log cabin and started with a sunny yellow corner and worked outwards through all the colours. I really love how this turned out! The block is approximately 20″ square. I am simply going to baste this block, quilt it and bind it. It looks great on our dining room table, but I think it will also look great hanging on the wall. I have officially fallen in love with mini quilts.

I’ve got a bunch of ideas for more scrappy blocks. I really enjoyed free style sewing all the pieces together. I’m thinking that Sunday nights are going to be my ‘mini quilts’ night. I had so much fun and felt so inspired by the process.

I have a new obsession.

Over the weekend I started making these mini log cabin blocks from scrap fabrics from my stash and from the scrap bin at the workroom. I collected all my favourite scraps and then sorted them all by colour. Then I started creating little mini colour palettes for each log cabin block and so it began…

Here’s what I love about this. Each tiny block is an exercise in colour. I can try out dozens of different colour palettes without committing to an entire quilt or large scale project. I can be experimental, spontaneous and playful without worrying about the outcome. It’s soo much fun!

Also, I’m using up tiny scraps. A lot of these are leftovers from all my past projects or leftovers from YOUR past projects. I’ve been swiping your little scrap bin throwaways for months and finally I’m using them.

This particular block was inspired by a spread in one of my visual diaries. I’ve been making these visual diaries/collage/scrap/inspiration books since university. It is one of my favourite all-time activities to sit down with my bottle of rubber cement and endlessly arrange the bits and pieces of magazines clippings and ephemera that I collect. Every time I open one of my books I’m immediately inspired. This particular colour palette stood out and I gathered my orange, grey and navy scraps. These are colours that I never would have put together on my own, but they look so delicious!

A crafty nod goes to Jen, whose log cabin heart medallions made me want to do tiny patchwork.

It’s so satisfying to check stuff off my crafty list of things to do. Making fabric mushrooms has been on that mental list for a very long time, so I was really inspired when I saw Mon Petit Lapin’s post that directed me to this tutorial. Thank you, Rebecca!

I find projects that use up scraps of fabric especially gratifying. They make me feel much less guilty about the boxes of fabric bits that I’ve been hoarding for so long. You might notice that two of the mushrooms bear a striking resemblance to my new lounge pants. That fabric just seemed like perfect mushroom fabric and now I’m coordinating with my room decor. The orange mini floral is a scrap from a fabric I’ve used in many many projects.

I was even more thrilled to finally find a great use for my jar of thread bits. I’ve been collecting thread at the shop, hoping to recycle it one day. It makes an ideal stuffing for these mushroom softies.

This project is really easy, the hardest part was finding the right little stones to put in the base of the stem to hold them upright. Even still they are not very stable, but as a set, they seem to hold each other up.

Next up, I’d like to tackle a few projects from the Softies book. I especially like these sweet bunnies. I hope that Perfect Bunny won’t mind a few friends. My ultimate goal is to make some birds, a giraffe and a squirrel.

I’m incredibly inspired by these talented ladies – Ashley Anna Brown, Ann Wood, Rosa Pomar, and Tamar Mogendorff.