golfer

One of our guild members takes anyone's scraps to a retirement center where the ladies will make quilts with them. So I give me scraps to them, because they can perform miracles with my scraps which I would not be able to do.

Rose Burnett

I am given lots of scraps that I cut into strips of various widths. I used to cut a strip or two of ten different widths from each fabric if there were enough to do so. I have revised my cutting to start with the widest strip that I can cut and then the next widest, on down the scale. I start with six inch strips cut with my six inch wide ruler. When I finish the six inch cuts, I start with five inch cuts. This goes down from 6, 5, 4.5, 4, 3.5, 3, 2.5, 2, and 1.5 strips. I cut as many pieces as I can from each fabric with no regard to straight of grain. After cutting a large amount, I sort by size and color. Next, I sew like widths and color end to end. After sewing, I roll right side out each strip and place a pin in the end of the roll. I used to put all colors in one roll, but I discovered that I prefer to have one color family in each roll. When I want to make a string quilt, I take out one color of rolls and start making a quilt similar to the jelly roll quilts from side to side. I used to make them length wise, but I found that width wise was much easier. I vary the widths of the strips in each row of the quilt. I changed to cutting the larger strips first because after years of making these quilts, I finally realized that it was far faster to use wider strips than small one and a half inch strips. I make the quilts about 42 inches wide and from 42 inches to 72 inches long, according to which group needs them most. There are many things that could be done to these quilts to enhance them........cut into blocks, triangles, etc........but I prefer to leave them just as strings. Occasionally, I will applique something to the top to make it more kid friendly. With the rolls ready to go, I sometimes piece four or more tops in an evening. Pieces too small for me I give to a children's art group.