Alpha Table Scraps Challenge

I’ve got a plan for 2023 Table Scraps Challenge hosted by 

The Joyful Quilter

This year is an alpha challenge with letters of the alphabet.

For January the letter choices are C, R and/or J. 

I’m taking a little break from non-stop quilting and plan to focus on sending out fun postcard mail.  I’ve hit the ground running for January.  I made cards relating to all three letters.

Scraps are all that’s needed for these little mail greetings and wishes. 

For letter C I have a cat and a chicken.  (Along with Christmas)

For letter R I have a reindeer, a rabbit and relatives.

    

For J I have Joy.



(I’m hoping that when December rolls around again, I’ll have all my Christmas postcards sewn and ready to write and mail.)

Now to give credit to the designers of these fun images…

Cat

Chicken

Reindeer

Rabbit

Relatives

Joy

I’ve reduced all the patterns to fit a 4” X 6” postcard.

I love the always fun and adorable Bloomin’ Minds pattern designs and I’ve sewn several things over the years from the Art To Heart, I Believe book.  

Scrappy Nine Patch Quilt

After working with the guild challenge scrap bags, I was ready to clean out my own scrap bin. My bin is not large but it has gotten quite stuffed.

I cut a lot of the scraps into 3.5” squares.  As I was laying out the pieces, it seemed that mostly brighter colors were what looked best.  I stitched together nine patch blocks with a black square in each center.

I have had this rainbow stripe fabric in my stash for years and years.  I think it was a good choice for the binding on this scrappy quilt.  And I am so thrilled to have finally used “most” of it.

It turns out to be a nice throw size quilt at 52” X 64”.

As I’ve never been much of a fan of scrap quilts, this was an adventure outside my comfort zone. But I’m rather pleased with the results.  



Now I have the darker fabric cut squares to deal with.  Yes, there is a plan developing.

How nice it is to have a not-so-stuffed scrap bin too!

Second Scrap Bag Quilt

I enjoyed making the first scrap bag quilt, so at guild the next month I brought home a second bag of scraps to have another go at scrappy piecing. 

Although I’m not as thrilled with this one, I still enjoyed making it as a charity quilt.  This quilt turned out larger than the first one measuring 51” X 70”

I did purchase the outside border fabric and the backing fabric. Two great sale finds.

I have never made quilts from scraps before. But I always have a stuffed bin of scraps. These two scrappy quilts got my fingers itching to see what I could do with my own bin of scraps…stay tuned to see how that goes!

Postcard Craze

I’ve been in a fabric postcard making mood.

A couple of friends and I went to the June Tailor warehouse sale recently, so I made them each a postcard with bits of some of the fabrics I bought there.  Unexpected surprise mail is the best mail…in my opinion.

A recent name draw for Postcrossing…she likes goth, tattoos, Edgar Allen Poe and skulls.

What started this current postcard craze was an idea for Christmas postcards. 

I don’t normally make so many alike.  I put them together assembly line style.  The trees were die cut. 

    

I was not looking forward to hand stitching so many sequins!  But it wasn’t so bad and went along a lot quicker than I thought it would.

I die cut the words on the backs from metallic paper. 

Happy mail day!

Japanese Inspired Quilt

A Japanese inspired quilt.

These fabrics were so nice to sew with.

The colors are so rich and bold and laced with gold.

The backing is a quilting cotton, not a Japanese fabric.  With the gold speckles, it went with the Japanese fabrics beautifully.  It’s a lot of red, but so pretty.

There were enough scraps to make a pretty 20” pillow cover.

**the cover is just lying over a pillow for the photo**

More of the scraps make up the backside of the pillow cover.

With still more scraps, I made a snap pouch and wristlet keychains.

The fabrics are a bit heavier than quilting cottons, so they make into a nice weighted throw quilt ready to cuddle under.



I’m trying to avoid continually accumulating scraps.  There are just some bits left.  Enough to make a postcard or two.