This week I had the opportunity to talk to the group Beyond Borders, part of the Modern Quilt Guild, about the way I make my quilts and I design with scraps.

I’m a scrap saver, I allow scraps guide my improv and I use scraps as one of the elements of quilt composition. How did this quilt,  River gone green, come about?

This quilt was made with remainders of earlier work.
The green fields were non-used remainders from this work below: “Open air” (at the moment part of the SAQA global exhibition Abstraction: textural elements). A hint of the green area, inside “Open air”, remained: down at right.
Scraps can be used to trace lines on the design wall: you can see here, how I used scraps while composing “Open Air”.

In this period, when I didn’t have time for sewing, I thought that I can still use scraps… for photos! Like I did 20 years ago in my first photo gallery: Flowers, fruits and embroidery.

Recently I started to make photo composition with scraps received from a friend. In the picture below you can see how I used paper and fabric scraps. The piece of paper was from Ally Ryde, design teacher. Thank you, Ally, for giving me these small pieces, that became the start of something new!

I would like to continue in this way: to keep connected with quilting friends, receiving scraps (fabric, paper, small reminders from work in progress) and using them to exercise in making compositions. The name for this photo series will be: “design with a friend”. After having received a postal letter with tiny pieces, I can send back a postcard with the photo I’ve made.
Would you like to join?