Leftovers VI

Back in 2011  I started collecting turquoise blue and brown fabrics for my Blue Odyssey Quilt.

I ended up buying and cutting way more fabric than I needed.  As a result, I had piles of left over strips and little pieces. First I made ‘Leftovers I’ with more than one thousand 1-3/8″ x 2-1/2″ tiny rectangles.

Then came Leftovers II.  For this one I tackled the pile of 1-1/2 inch strips.

Then came Leftovers III.  I made a good dent in the huge pile of 1-1/4 inch strips.

Leftovers IV combined the 1-1/2 and 1-1/4 inch strips to make a HST string quilt

Leftovers V was a circle log cabin.  It made another big dent in my strips and even used a few of the small rectangles.

Now I have a Leftovers VI.  I needed to come up with a design that would use up a lot of the small 1-3/8″ x 2.5″ rectangles.  I just started sewing them together and came up with this idea for a rectangular block.  I ended up with 25 of them.

I wanted this quilt to have a more modern feel to it with lots of background for free motion quilting.  I used my design wall to layout the blocks and came up with several different ideas.  Here’s a few of them.

Ultimately I used the last one as my inspiration.

As you can see, I let my longarm take on a life of its own.  I experimented with using  both white and light grey thread to add some more dimension to the FMQ.

Sadly there are still lots of rectangles and a fair number of strips left.  I don’t know if there will be a leftovers VII….but if there is…..it won’t be for a while.  I need a break.