Around November I started looking at all of my stuff and thinking that I either needed to “use it or lose it.” That was the beginning of what has turned into a fairly massive clearing out of everything around the house, including my scraps.

I had a pile of scraps that I had saved from trimming up the blocks in my Not So Straight and Narrow Quilts – both the queen-sized one that I had hand quilted (read about this quilt here, here, here, and here) and the throw size (still for sale!) that I made for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles’ museum shop.

I always thought these scraps were fun and wanted to make something from them, so I thought, “Now’s the time!” So, I started piecing them together. I gave you a sneak peek of this project back on December 1!

I tried various things, but opted for alternating solid strips with strips that contained little bits of other fabrics.

I ended up with four blocks and then needed to decide if I wanted to shove them all together, or add sashing so I could make a larger quilt, keeping in mind that I wanted this quilt to come entirely from stuff I had lying around. I tried solid sashing – this was the only solid that went that I had enough of.

And I tried print sashing, since the blocks were mostly solids.

And in the end, I opted to just smoosh them together and make a smaller quilt.

I’d had some thoughts on how I would like it to be quilted, and realized that not only would it be easier to execute if hand quilted, but that this quilt was actually small enough that such a thing would be feasible.

So, I hand quilted.

I tried out the idea of pieced binding in an effort to use more of my little scraps, but it just wasn’t working for me.

I ended up with a solid binding, and I’m really happy with how it turned out!

And just so you can see how big it is, here it is hanging over our loveseat (fyi – it’s stuck on the wall temporarily with double-sided tape! Kept falling off while I was trying to take the pictures!).

Not bad, for coming entirely from my stash (including the backing, the binding, and the batting!).

Since I finished the Bits and Pieces quilt I’ve been working on a second scrap/stash quilt – this one made from scraps from my Greek To Me quilt – for which I have the top and the backing assembled, and I’m currently pondering how I want to quilt it before I baste it together. There’s always something else in progress around here.

And the cleaning out progress has been pretty impressive. I managed to whittle my scraps down to probably 1/10 their original amount. I literally wanted to cry when I saw some of the really sad bits I had kept. I do not want to show up on some hoarders show one day!