All the little bits. All together and everywhere at the same time.
Ages ago I started sewing snippets together. Just two little bits of fabric sewn together randomly. An evening of pressing and I could sew pairs together. And sew more together. Then I put it all aside so a rainy day. Rather, for the motivation to do more.
Motivation hit me last week. It is all due to Amanda Jean and her decision to plan a Scrap Vortex quilt along. I also needed to come down from Market and sew for the sake of sewing. So one day she and I spent some time sewing and chatting. There was a lot of chain piecing and a lot of pressing involved to get what feels like millions of pieces sewn together.
At the beginning the bits come together quite slowly. It feels like you are sewing forever and getting nowhere. Then suddenly you have these big chunks of fabric that look like something. Crazy, wild somethings filled with tiny pieces of fabric! You also have crazy wild somethings all over your sewing table, design wall, and floor. You are covered in threads, more so than at any other time, but deliriously happy.
Then you are not. Because you are covered in threads and there are bits of fabric everywhere. Everywhere. And the fun chaos that you gave order too only seems like chaos. You can square it up, sew them together and have something that looks like a quilt top. Order out of chaos. But there are still load of snippets (are they multiplying at night?).
After a week of sewing I've got a large baby size quilt top together (44'' x 50''), plus loads of slab sections that could be added, and still half a basket of snippets. Not to mention that every single other time I sew more snippets are added. I love the process, I love where I've gotten to, but I need this to go away for a little while. Sometimes the chaos is just a bit too much.
I adore improv, it is my default quilt language. I will never get tired of scraps. Surprisingly though, this past week has been a roller coaster of emotions with respect to this sewing. I got to the point where the mess drove me cranky, where I talked back to the errant threads, and nearly threw out all the scraps. It was just so messy. I'm okay with not knowing where it will go, but the storm before the calm really got to me.
All that being said, I know that this will get bigger, be more. All in good time.
9 comments:
It was so fun to sew and chat with you! I love the piece as is. I think it does need to be bigger, of course. But all in good time! I had a bout of frustration with scraps this week, too. Strangely NOT with the 1/2" HSTs! Ha!
Ah, so beautiful! I love your colourful scraps and the last photo is really cute! x Teje
If you stop now, it has an orange centre. Personally I'd use that as a starting point for the quilting - maybe a radiating spiral pinwheel a la TallgrassPrairie? http://tallgrassprairiestudio.blogspot.de/2014/12/moving-on.html
What a perfect description of the process... and a gorgeous scrappy outcome!
Funnily I am at almost the same place. It takes "forever" to pull one coluor band of scrap pieces to something resembling worth using! But Ive just bought myself a new sewing machine to replace my broken down old one and I'm looking forward to whizzing through to the end of the boxes! Wish me luck! Yours looks great. Mine is much more random in snippet sizes. Its been a good many years of hoarding to get to this point. I hope it turns out like the pretty colour cordinated one in my head!
Beautiful scrappy quilt. You have inspired me, as always. It is stunning.
I laughed SO hard reading the "I'm so happy/And then I am not" because I go through the SAME thing. I usually clean up my scrap bins once every two months or so and make big slabs o' scrap fabric. And then I am horrified at the mess and into the Slab Box they go. And the cleaning begins. It's a good purge. It's good for ya.
Thanks for the honest review of the process! The quilt top is gorgeous though. It always amazes me that random scraps can come together into something so apparently cohesive.
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