Waste Not... Want Not... Quilt MN 2012

My determination to use every scrap of the Quilt MN this year has led me down a path I've never taken in my quiltmaking years... absolutely NO PATTERN!!!  I seldom actually follow a pattern from beginning to end.  My general belief is that patterns are guidelines, not gospel.  As a result, my quilts are always a bit different than the pattern maker intended.  Even my own patterns evolve as I make a project.  I start with the basic concept and change things as I go along.  The final result is always different than my original idea.

So -- trying to figure out how I was going to use all these printed panels was a challenge.  I dived in with the star blocks that I demonstrated earlier but when those were finished, I just didn't know what to do.  After giving myself a headache, I decided that I am just going to piece fabrics together with no concept of what the finished product will be.

These 11" x 15" printed panels have posed an unusual challenge.  I didn't want to just put the small printed pictures right up alongside the large ones so I had to find some way to separate them.  I finally decided to just start sewing and I ended up with a row of fabric.

 

I started with the large printed panel and added blocks and fabrics to build out the row.  I will have to do some trimming and squaring up before it can actually be placed in a quilt, but it's a good start.  I found it to be a bit boring though so I decided that the next row should have more piecing involved.  What you see below is the second row constructed.

 

This row has more interest (in my opinion anyway) and if you look closely, you will see that I used some scraps to create fill in fabrics.

 

I purchased two charm packs on my shop hop and as I started putting this row together, I decided to incorporate some of them.  The block shown above started with the 5" charm square in the center.  Because I had already trimmed the small printed pictures, I had to enlarge the charm square to be the same size.  I used some scraps to to this as shown.  It looks pretty good just laying on my mat but the little strips on the border of the block are too narrow.  They get lost in the design when it is sewn into the row.  I won't do this again.  If I decide to use this block again, I will trim the charm square down some so the borders show up better.

 

So -- progress.  Two rows done but I need to come up with some ideas for separating these rows. 

 

Time to put my thinking cap on!