I Picked the Pailsey Print and Managing the Lil' Twister scraps with my Go!

 Just a reminder that there are still a few days to enter my GIVEAWAY!  If you want to read all about it please click here for information.  Go all the way to the end of my post.

 

I decided to go with the paisley print!  It's only a very small boarder so it's not very busy.  My main thing about that top print from yesterday is that the small print in it was white instead of cream.  So it just clashed a bit too much for my mind.  Anyways, since this was a scrap project to:

a) try out my new ruler and

b) use up some 4-patches from a swap

I decided to stop over-thinking it and go with my gut and initial impression.  I'm happy I did ~ I really like the over-all effect and I am excited to use the ruler again so it was a successful project all around for me ;-)

 

The only negative about this pattern and technique is that there is some waste.  Every one of those red triangles in the pieced boarder generates an equal amount of waste.  It was too small to cut into my regular 2" squares for my leader and enders; but, it just felt too large to throw away.  With the price of cotton, and, therefore fabric, going up I didn't want to just throw them out.

Then I got a bit of a brain-wave.  Those little pieces look a lot like the wedges used to make the triangle in a square unit and I have the Accuquilt Go!  die for that!  I laid the pieces on top and cut them into the wedges using my Go!  Some were a bit small but most fit the right side of the die perfectly.  I was really happy about this until I realized that that only gave me one side of the triangles since they were all the same direction - if that makes sense.

Then I remembered that I had some sashing strips left-over from my Sampler quilt that would fit across the die.  So, I dug those strips out of my scrap-heap and hmmmm . . . . they really need a pressing.  Maybe I should organize my scraps a bit better and just stop trying to pretend that they don't exist.

 After the strips were pressed they were the exact perfect size to go across the dies - woohoo!  SO I was able to deal with scraps from the Lil' Twister and from my sampler quilt.  I felt pretty proud about this LOL!

I ended up with 26 pairs of right and left sides to the triangle in a square unit.

While searching through my scrap-heap for my sashing strips I found a single 15" square of a cream.  It looks to me like I cut this for an applique block that just never happened.   Oh well ~ it worked perfectly for exactly 26 triangle units. 

I have no idea what to do with 26 triangle in a square units ~ but ~ I am happy to have easily and quickly cut up, into something usable, what was about to go into the trash for me.  I couldn't have used up these random bits and made the side units without my go or templates (yuck). 26 units will give me 6 stars with two units left over.  Or maybe I could just keep cutting more scraps into these type of units and start another leader and ender project.  These stacked end to end or side to side would make a really nice scrappy pieced boarder.   Hmmmm Any thoughts?  How do you all deal with your scraps?  Stack them up or deal with them right away?

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Happy Quilting all!