15 Minutes of Play

I spent lots of time over last weekend and part of yesterday getting some samples prepared for class.  Unfortunately due to a variety of reasons including Easter Holidays and good weather sadly a few of our ladies were unable to attend last night.  The tutorial went ahead with mixed views on the finished outcome.  Needless to say too much thought was put into the process.  The idea of this method of piecing is to choose fabrics at random from the scrap basket, sew, press, cut, slash.  Some ladies were trying too hard to make shapes, and match colours - we don't do random apparently!  I know it is sometimes difficult to break the rules but sometimes you must to learn something different or a new technique.

The scraps

As with all new things it's not easy to be perfect on the first attempt.  The more random blocks you make the quicker it all becomes and the more you can achieve in 15 minutes.  Here are some of the pieces I managed to make during my 15 minutes of play.

There are a few things I have noticed along the way which might help.  Use a smaller stitch length on your machine as you will be chopping seams, and you don't want them to unravel. Try not to use strips or you will get just that - either a long thin piece or a square.  Try and cut shapes with angles. The smaller the pieces you use the more effective it becomes. When sewing use a quarter inch seam as usual and place your new scrap down on your machine, right side up then place the already seamed patch, right side down on top so that you see all the raw seams facing you.  This will help keep all those little seams lying flat when sewing over the top of them and you can see when you are coming up to a thick part so you can go slowly over the bumps.  Press, press, press .....and use steam, I know, I know, there are mixed views on this but if you try it you will find you then get a nice sharp finish.



The smaller the pieces you start off with gives a better effect in the finished block



A trimmed 6.5inch square

and a hexagon - that turquoise piece is a bit on the big side I think



A selection of blocks I've made so far



I am not sure if this was an overwhelming success with the class however I enjoyed the process and will continue to use up some of my scraps to make 'made up fabric', so that it can then be transformed into traditional blocks like this one.



Aunt Eliza's Star from EQ7

I think this looks really pretty and can see it being made up as a baby quilt for the Linus Project.  I hope some of the ladies will have time to try out some more blocks before next week when we can then cut them all up to try and produce some stars, square in a square, churn dash, nine patch and more traditional type blocks.  Watch this space!

Perhaps you might like to give it a try and help scrap bust your stash.  Good Luck.

The Inspiration for this was as mentioned previously Victoria Findlay Wolfe's, method as seen on The Quilt Show and in her book 15 minutes of Play.