Reimagining the Scraps

A while back, when I was cleaning out the sewing room, I rediscovered this cookie tin of scraps:

These were all the bits and pieces that were leftover from my Long Time Gone quilt. I set myself a challenge to make a quilt top using as many of these little scraps as I could. 

After unboxing, this is what I had to work with:

There were lots and lots of triangle units in various sizes.  I turned some of them into Monkey Wrench style blocks.

Some were made into churn dash blocks, and hourglass blocks:

and some were turned into pinwheels:

If I needed a few more half square triangles, there were a couple of Snowball blocks that I cut down like this, to create 4 matching triangle squares:

There was a short stack of Flying Geese blocks that I also trimmed down and re-sewed into sort of funky flowers:

Then there was this awesome little strip of tiny pieces that I couldn't imagine  what I was thinking when I made them:

So, of course I made some more!   And then used them to surround some Square in a Square blocks:

Hang in there, I promise you there is a quilt to show in the end!

I arranged what bits I had so far on my design board:

and  started playing around with placement, adding in  a few other found bits like the little House block and a few 9 patches.  Then I filled out the empty spaces with some  Log Cabin blocks  and a little strip of Flying Geese.

I also added in some strips of just scrappy squares as filler when I needed them, including surrounding the whole thing  with a border of squares:

Finally, I added two more borders, first a light tan and then a sort of cranberry, and here is the finished top.  It measures just 25 X 32 inches.

Can you imagine all this was hiding inside that box of scraps?

Linking up with Cynthia Brunz at Quilting is more fun than Housework