JB28: holiday leftovers!!! :)

this week at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ the prompt is "holiday leftovers" by which we mean: make a card using as many scraps, offcuts, bits and bobs as you possibly can! as a rule, one of my favorite ways to do that is to make inchies; another is to emulate the brilliant quilters of the world who constantly astonish us with what they can do with nothing except tiny bits of fabric and a whole lot of ingenuity! i've done plenty of paper-piecing and other techniques that are "lifted" from sewing... but this time i decided to actually use a proper quilting pattern and just adapt it to paper. i considered both the "crazy quilt" style and the traditional "log cabin" pattern, but this quilt--and the step by step guide--at quiltville.com made me decide to try to re-create a "string-pieced quilt".

here's my card:

(patterned paper... OOF... there are lots and ALL were teeny strips in my scrap box, but off the top of my head i see: basic grey, my mind's eye, creative imaginations, love elsie, pink paislee, paper co, and some stamped and misted "essperiments" of my own; blue cardstock (which was a SCRAP!): core'dinations; glossy white cardstock: ranger; poinsettias: michaels & we r memory keepers; snowflakes: ki, recollections, jolees; brad: around the block; gem flourish: oriental trading co; ink: martha stewart; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine; other: decorative scissors)

this was such a fun and easy technique that i thought it'd be fun to show you, step-by-step, how i did it:

1. adhere strips diagonally to square

my square is 5x5" and my strips are of all different lengths and widths. i went light on adhesive since i knew i'd be stitching each piece as well.

2. "quilt" the square

this is optional. if you adhere everything firmly in step one, you can faux stitch or leave it out altogether. i stuck my square to some cheap index stock so that i could run over on the edges with my machine and not have to pull or trim 20,000 thread ends,

3. make the triangles

cut your square in half diagonally and the two resulting triangles in half again; for the pattern shown on card one, cut the four the four pieces in half AGAIN; either way, when you've got all your pieces, re-assemble in a pleasing manner.

4. assemble, mount and "quilt" again

another optional step, but i think it adds a lot of interest. i lightly glued my triangles onto a contrasting square of cardstock, sewed all the way around the perimeter, and finally trimmed the base with decorative scissors. if you prefer the look of step 3, skip this and move right to card assembly!

5. add embellishments

i made a compound layered snowflake/flower accent using a variety of stickers and diecuts, and set it off with a rhinestone flourish.

of course the best bit is, now i quite painlessly have TWO more cards this week... and a few less scraps!

if i was really on the ball, i could've made a whole bunch of the large "strip squares" and then divided them and mixed them up, like one would in a real quilt. but at the moment i'm really enjoying the "once a week" unicard vibe over at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥! hey--why don't you try it, too??!?! :)