I don't remember where I bought it, but I know that I've had it for a long time...this $3 quart-sized bag stuffed with small scraps. I was attracted to it because the fabrics are from the 30s and 40s.
Upon opening it, I was surprised to find all pieces of the same size and trapezoidal shape!
When I first brought the bag home, I hand-pieced a few pairs of the pieces together. But not really knowing what I wanted to do with them, the bag was put aside. I found it again while sorting my collection of vintage blocks and fabrics. And because I'd been browsing scrap quilt ideas on Pinterest, I now knew what to do with the tiny trapezoidal pieces!
I began by sorting and counting them (there were more than 500 pieces in the bag!!!). Those that were too soiled or too irregular to use were discarded. The rest of them were pressed.
The trapezoids were randomly machine-pieced in pairs, short end to long end. After pressing, they were all trimmed to 1 1/2" x 2".
The pairs were then randomly pieced in sets of 4 to form the sides of churn dash blocks. Since most of the scraps were pink, solid pink fabric was chosen for the corners and muslin for the background. I had enough scrap sets to make 16 blocks.
The blocks were set together with simple pink sashing (cut 2" wide) with muslin cornerstones.
It is still a mystery to me from where these scraps might have come--so many of them and all the same shape and size! How to use them is no longer a mystery--I now have a wonderful lap quilt: "Churn Dash and Shoo-fly"
