The cold weather and holiday season are upon us. Although, I’d rather be out in the sunshine, I’m happy to hunker down this time of year. There’s not enough daylight hours, so finding projects to do inside helps pass the time when darkness settles in. I am motivated with my inside projects, because there are fewer external activities to grab my attention (e.g., yard work). One project I’m working on involves quilted leftovers.

When I create my quilts, I start them larger than I need. Shrinkage happens as you stitch a quilt. Making them larger, makes it easy to cut them to an exact finished size. Sometimes when I start a project I don’t know what size the finished design will be. By starting larger, I can let the finished composition determine the dimensions I need to trim. I save all these trimmings as “leftovers.”

This year I gathered a few larger completed projects that weren’t working for me. These quilts have also been delegated to my sacrificial pile of leftovers.

I trim the scraps and sew them together in a serendipitous process. I then cut them into  4″ x 6″ pieces to use as the background for my fabric postcards. With the addition of the larger quilted pieces, this year I have more (and larger) assemblages. As I’ve been working with the scraps, I’m thinking of other things I can do with some of these random compositions. I have an idea (or two), but I need to play with the concepts a little (hint: imagine some surface design experiments). With or without sunshine, this winter I’m ready to play. This should be fun.