Iceblossom

AngelAnne, this bag of scraps just grabbed me. It was so bright and cheery (even with grey fabrics) and so not me! LOL. It helped that it was mostly fat quarter remnants and easy to cut. If you go back and read my notes my thoughts are clearer but here it is summed up:

I'm doing this project to loosen up, I've been inspired by one of the ladies in my small group that is an improvisational quilter. In this project corners don't need to match exactly or at all. (not my normal concept) Fabrics are going to not be "perfect" that is, polka dots and quatrefoil prints of different colors or sizes will touch, same colors will be next to each other, all the sorts of things that I work to de-randomize I'm leaving in as is. There was never any desire or planning for the 9-patches to all have dark corners or light centers or anything like that. I was just going for random fabric using.

I cut strata of various widths and then combined them randomly into 3-piece sections. My goal was for a 10-12" block that would be cut down with a 8.5" square because it would be highly unlikely that I would be able to achieve a normal perfect block at that size. Each block does have exactly 9 pieces in it, some are small and some are large, they may all have different shapes but they are all 9-patches. Most of the blocks I trimmed on a tilt but some are still more noticeably square 9-patches.

I found that anything below a 3 to 3.25" cut was just too small and would give me problems with my finished desired size. As I went on I got freer and not all my strips had a numeric size, just "that's how big the scrap is and it seems to be good enough." All of my seams are basic straight right angle seams and the pieces are mostly squares and rectangles unless the scrap had a jag but you don't have to do them that way. My improvisational friend will sometimes throw in some pieced units either left from other projects like half-square triangles, but my bag of scraps didn't have any of that.

In my project I'm making 70 blocks. One block is my fussy cut and more or less precise Caroline block. All the others are off, skewed, or in other ways not-perfect. I just finished filling my current box for my crumb quilter with the trimmings from this project -- the strips that didn't get used, small jagged pieces that I washed but didn't want to deal with, and quite a bit of trimmings from the blocks themselves. Like that picture I showed with the ruler, the cloud fabric had a nice bit for a crumb quilter. Anything that didn't start out at least 1.5" wide I tossed but there is still a sizeable stack of triangular trimmings in the crumb box. If I didn't have a person to send them to, I would have flinched slightly at the mound of them but I could have easily and happily thrown them out as their purpose in fabric had been served!

Yesterday I trimmed the rest of the blocks and have more or less randomly pinned two blocks together. Usually I layout my blocks on the bed, but for this I'm letting it take its own course. I understand that it will look more like a crazy quilt than a 9-patch, but I decided on no sashing or alternate blocks but either of those things would work and could enhance another set of fabric. I did sort the blocks a bit, like the ones I grabbed for the first pictures all had that grey with polka dots print, had another with a purple polka dot that was very noticeable, as were the house blocks and the elephants. I tried to be as random as I could and keep repeating fabrics away from each other but I know as I put blocks together it will happen anyway. It was just easier to go through and match the noticeable ones with the more random ones.

Edit: When I was making my strata sometimes I would use strips that I would get several repeating cuts of the same combination. I would also take a long piece and pin squares left from previous rounds of cutting. It was fast and I tried to limit my thinking and working on my doing! It's been fun, I still say though that the finished product will be "too loud to sleep under" but it will be bright and happy and someone will love it.