Orpington Quilters
In September 2022 we welcomed Pamela Egan-Wyer as our guest speaker, to give a lively talk entitled "Scraps & Stash".
Pamela is a member of Beckenham Quilters and was once asked to find a speaker on scraps but with no luck. Therefore she decided to put together the talk herself. Like any long term quilter, she had acquired an abundance of scraps from various projects and so felt well qualified to present such a talk.
At about six years old, Pamela started her sewing journey. She came from a sewing background as her father had a sewing machine business. A customer ordered a Bernina, a very advanced machine at that time, but found that she couldn't use it. So her father swapped it for a more traditional machine and the Bernina was given to Pamela.
As a teenager, she would make her own clothes, quickly running up a dress from a yard of material (£1.99) and a zip on Saturday afternoon to wear out in the evening.
When pregnant, Pamela made a Bargello style quilt out of polyester and seer sucker materials but this did not survive multiple washes well. So, cutting out the bad bits, she cut it into strips to make another quilt top and the idea of making something new out of scraps was born.
Here is a Crazy Quilt, created by sewing together various scrap shapes. This was much admired by a friend but Pamela didn't want to let it go so she made another for her friend.
Now Pamela was hooked on quilting, and particularly using scraps and her stash to create new projects. However, she soon realised that organisation of those scraps, etc., was essential. So she took pieces left over from her quilting and cut them into specific sizes, storing them accordingly. Here are some of her storage ideas.......
These boxes hold squares and rectangles cut to size and labelled accordingly.
Odd, smaller scraps are stored in partitioned boxes.
A box of jelly roll oddments.
And a box of strips ready for quilting.
Wadding can also organised according to size and weight, so useful for quilt-as-you-go. Pamela tends to discards anything under two inches as multiple seams in a small area can make it difficult to sew.
This is an Alanda Craft design using the crumb quilt technique, whereby any scraps with a straight line are joined together in what seems a haphazard fashion, trimming off to a straight line and continue joining until the desired size is achieved.
...though Pamela prefers straight and symmetrical.
Here are a couple of premature baby quilts made from sashed blocks...........
The use of scraps really comes into its own in the quilt-as-you-go technique shown in this quilt, where strips were built up into squares which were then all joined together.
A wide variety of patterns can be achieved by joining strips; gates, braiding, chevrons, etc.
Here is an example of strips made into blocks then each square cut diagonally to make up a new square with a plain contrast.
Pamela showed this blocked postage stamp quilt. She described a technique which almost guarantees all seams are aligned. You can buy, or mark out yourself, Vilene with a 1-inch grid. Place your fabric on it (less 1mm), cover with brown paper and iron the fabric in place. By folding on each line and stitching, there is no need to try and match seams.
There is always the question of whether or not to sash your blocks but it does help calm the busyness if the quilt is made up of small pieces and lots of colour
Pamela presented lots of examples of the many different ways that your scrap pieces can be joined to produce wonderful designs.
This crumb quilt uses plain squares intermingled with crazy blocks.
A quilt of 4" squares chopped down and the colours mixed to produce the offset inner square.
Various sized squares set on the diagonal so they look like diamonds.
A strip quilted cushion.
A faux Cathedral Window cushion.
A Gwen Marsden bag.
And even landscape quilts displayed as pictures.
Different threads (metallic, variegated, etc.) are used to accentuate the features of this wall art.
A Sea Glass quilt.
We were very grateful to Pamela for her talk. She made it lively and interesting, and she gave our audience of accomplished quilters something to think about in terms of organisation, design and 'just give it a go'. She also imparted some simple guidelines for working with scraps: clean your machine and cutting mat regularly, and change your needle frequently.
She also provided this information about useful resources when working with scraps.
