eXtreme Scrapping: A Table Runner from Leftovers

I'm a little bit silly about saving fabric scraps.  I save just about every little bit of usable fabric.  Usable for me can be as little as 1/2 inch.  Does that move me from the silly to the compulsive category?  May be so.  So be it.

Extreme Scrapping Table Runner - Batiks
leftover from the Tsunami Quilt
http://busybeeno16.blogspot.com/2012/12/tsunami-quilt-descent-into-chaos_26.html

The center squares are done by topstitching
(with a decorative stitch)
two little scrappy bits together.

I do not use a foundation, just slightly
overlap the pieces, topstitch, press and trim. 

It is a technique I developed when I decided
I needed to use up all the little bits leftover
from the New York Beauty Christmas quilt.
http://busybeeno16.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-new-york-beauty-christmas-quilt.html

I thought this would be a great project to try
quilting with Perle Cotton.

And quilting with my
grandmother's crochet thread ... why not?

The back ... and all the hand quilting.  

The quilting was all done free form,
experimenting with the different threads.

The difference in look of the
10 and 30 wt crochet threads.

The 10 wt bedspread weight thread is a bit too heavy and was hard to pull while quilting.  But I really like the heavier look of the thread.

The  Perle Cotton is the easiest to quilt with and
also has the heavier thread look.

The 30 wt crochet was also easy to pull.

A New York Beauty Christmas Quilt

My favorite quilt and my best work to date,
the New York Beauty Christmas quilt.

The full quilt.  I used wool batting (wonderful!) so there is good
definition on all the quilting lines.

All of the quilting was done on the Bernina.  The echo quilting was done
with the walking foot and it's very helpful guide.  And the outline quilting on the beauty points was done free hand with the FMQ foot.

The quilting, up close

The back.  I love the back fabric.  I'm very fond of big boisterous
fabrics on the back of quilts.  And the quilting really shows up nice.

. . . . and then there were all the many many many many! little bits of fabric trimmed away during paper piecing.  There was so much!  I had to use them somehow . . . I call it eXtreme scrapping.

eXtreme scrapping . . . A table topper. A little tree for my sewing table.
And two little stars for the tops of the table top little Christmas trees.

Think about all the cute little things that get thrown into the waste basket.

And yes, I have been known to waste basket dive at quilt retreats.

The sewing room tree.  It has a little pagoda thing going on.

These scrappy pieces were made by sewing the scraps directly onto a piece of batting, with a backing . . . it is quilt as you go.  I'm sorry I don't have pics of the process, this was done well before I thought about creating a blog.

The scrappy bits were simply butted up to each other and then a decorative stitch anchors them to each other and to the batting and backing at the same time.

Very few pieces were cut to fit and I didn't worry if there was overlapping.  I just wanted to use as many of the scraps as possible and  I just kept sewing until all the scrappy bits were all used up and then cut out the final shape I wanted

These pieces are reversible . . . leave an opening so they can be mounted.

And remember about mirror image, I had to do one of the stars twice, because I didn't remember about mirror image for the reverse side.

For the tree and star pieces I made templates from freezer paper.  And then cut the shapes once I had a big enough scrappy piece done.

On top of one of the trees . . . with one of my little knit hat ornaments

The dark fabrics were used around the edges.  This topper
it is just the size of the top piece of an old treadle sewing machine cabinet.

By the glow of Christmas lights