Red Scraps for Saturday

Progress on my two projects for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge has been very limited due to being out of town for much of the month. Since I have so little to show that is finished, I will share a little about how I work on these scrappy quilts.

My strips are sorted by color in a way similar to Bonnie Hunter's Scrap User's System. You can read about her method and see photos HERE. I have three little rolling carts with 10 drawers in each, and they are all filled with my scrap strips, sorted by color and size. This keeps them nice and neat, which makes cutting go faster. Here are two of the drawers of reds--on the left are 1.5", 1.75" and 2" strips, the drawer on the right is all 2.5" strips.

Yesterday I pulled out my red 2.5" and 1.5" strips to cut pieces for my rainbow bowtie blocks. I went through the strips in those sizes, choosing the fabrics I want to use in these blocks. As usual, I have selected many more fabrics than I need!

When it's time for cutting, I like to work with three strips at a time, all folded in half. I pick out three 2.5" strips, then make sure I have matching 1.5" strips of the same fabrics. They get stacked up and are ready to be cut. I need one pair of squares of each size for one bowtie block, but since I have all these fabrics laid out and ready for cutting, I am cutting three sets of each fabric (if my strips are long enough.)

The next photo shows my pairs of squares cut from the three strips. You can see that one of the smaller squares is missing a corner. That is okay for this pattern, because I am stitching corner-to-corner on the small squares. 

The next photo shows all of the squares I have cut so far. The two groups on the left have both sizes matched up together, and the stacks on the right side are extra squares that will go into my bins of pre-cut squares, waiting for a future scrappy project.

Here are my first few red bowtie blocks all stitched up.

I now have enough red squares cut to make tons of beautiful bowtie blocks (once I add 2.5" squares of background fabric to the mix.) I hope to have more time in the next week to finish up the rest of my blocks for July.

Check out all of the terrific scrappy rainbow projects at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

Julie in GA