You’re probably familiar with the “thread buddy”
- that scrap of fabric you use at the beginning and end of chain piecing. It has 2 purposes - it keeps thread tails tidy/reduces thread waste and it helps you sew straight seams. When you fill one up you throw it away and start another.
But what if you don’t use a scrap? And what if you don’t throw it away? I’m sure other quilters have had this idea, but teacher/author Bonnie Hunter has made it an integral part of her Scrap Users System and a tool to greater productivity. Follow me past the orange cheese doodle to see how it works.
The idea in the simplest form is take some squares - maybe you were just sewing with a jelly roll and you have some leftover pieces. Cut them up into 2.5 inch squares. Put a pile of them by your machine.
Grab 2 of them to start your chain piecing. Grab another 2 as you finish your chain piecing. You have just sewed 2 twosies, step 1 of sewing a 4 patch.
Keep at it and you’ll have a stack of twosies.
I like to throw them into a baggie, pinned into groups of 10, until I have “enough” for the next step.
The next step is to grab 2 twosies to start your chain piecing. And another 2 to end your chain piecing. Now you have 4 patches, one of the basic building blocks in quilting.
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You’re halfway to double 4 patches.
You can sew 4 4-patches together into a 16 patch. This pairs nicely with a snowball block. I find that this combo makes a great baby/child quilt, as you can fussy cut a focus fabric for the snowball blocks.
The 4 patches can become the corners of 54-40 or Fight blocks.
Here, instead of using scraps for the 4 patches, you can be sewing the 4 patches in your chosen fabrics as you sew your V blocks.
Google “four patch quilts” and you’ll find all sort of ideas on how to use 4 patches in quilts on Pinterest, etc.
To me, the hardest part is committing to the process. I am not a production piecer. But I’m also creating a lot of scraps as I quilt, and this does help keep them from stacking up. Also, if I commit to it, I can be sewing on my quilts and VA quilts at the same time. My half-hearted attempts have already yielded a nice stack of twosies using leftovers from 2 inch strips
and another stack from leftovers from jelly rolls (that I put in a "safe" place and can't find). I guess I just need to stick to it for 21 days and I’ll have a new habit.
Thanks for reading, and what have you been working on?