UFO Sunday again already?

This week, I decided to work on one of my WIPs because my UFO is currently waiting for the rest of the wadding and fabric to be delivered.

I'm making a scrap quilt for my neighbour to say thank you for looking after my dog once a week and our ferrets every time we go away.  She'd great, so she deserves something absolutely fantastic.  But I have no money to buy fantastic fabric.  So I'm making it.  Out of practiacally all the craps I've ever made, or at least all the scraps I've made and kept over the last 3 or 4 years.  I also asked my mother in law if she had any, and apparently she had been keeping some specially for me, knowing how much I like to fiddle with tiny scraps.

I have already made about 4 or 5 'squares' that aren't anywhere near being square, and I'll have to bring up to size later with the shedloads of 1 or 2 inch strips that are waiting for the job, but this time I decided to go back into the scrap bag and start from scratch again.  And this is how it went.  Playing jigsaw with randomy cut bits and bobs made this pile of ironing...

And after ironing, it made some fantastic shapes...

I end up using the scrap pieces really like a cross between jigsaw pieces and stitch and flip - just without the base bit of fabric.

So I place them on my sewing table and look for the best match to one or other of the sides on another.  And if I can't, then not to worry, just get the best fit and cut some off if it's not right.  After all, these were scraps that would never have got used otherwise, so it's not really wasting.  I keep telling myself that.  I really can't stand wasting fabric!!

This is how far I got (it's about 11pm by now, on a school night so no matter how much in the flow I am, I have to stop here. (boo hoo!)

But if you really can't bear to throw away the bits you cut off, then you can do this with them.  My favourite piece so far, and it's not even as big as the palm of my hand yet - the secret is to use bits that are already sewn together.  Find a piece that you have sewn and cut some off, large enough to get a seam of about 1/8 inch or bigger that is made of 2 pieces of fabric, and sew that to another one of similar proportions.  Make sure you keep ironing though.  And I suggest it will probably need a lot of free motion quilting on top of it....