I love how quilt patterns can create an entirely different feel based on fabrics. Take Persephone Awaits. The original quilt is crisp and modern, made from a collection of ombré fabrics. The second version was made using a collection of blue, white, grey and cream prints. Both beautiful, but they definitely have different feels.
Diamonds can be tricky because of the bias but if you don’t pay attention you can make a mistake. Cue the size. When I laid this quilt on my design wall I didn’t catch that the quilt was a rectangle going the wrong way, i.e. wider than tall. See also: diamonds can be visually deceptive. Once I pieced the quilt I realized that I had to cut the top down to a square because of my mistake. That’s fine. The quilt is still plenty big to cover a lap but that did leave me with the conundrum of what to make with the scraps because I had a different set of leftovers than the original.
And THAT is why I love Zero Waste Quilting. For this quilt I had the same basic shapes leftover but more of them meant I could play to see what I could create.
Like the original leftovers, I used the half-rectangle triangles to create a small wallhanging. I played with the color to create dimension in the blocks. You can see the similarities and see how different the quilts look, too! The original is on the left and the new version is on the right.
And the leftovers I used to make the pillow (see photo above) and crochet case in the original Persephone? They became a cool quilt in this version – mostly because I had extra parts from all the trimming.
Zero Waste Quilting challenges you to work within a set of constraints to use what you have. I just love working in this manner. It takes me back to the roots of quilting because I’m working with a finite amount of leftovers and it forces me to get creative. I love what I make and I love that I’m not buying more fabric to make the additional projects.
Now to figure out what to do with the rest of those leftovers. Squee!