Stitched in Color

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fair warning

I warn you, if you start poking around for pieced scraps they just keep on coming.  Really, don't do it.  Unless you want to feel obligated...

hmm....

Remember this bit of solids patchwork I made for Modern Medallion and rejected for overshadowing the previous rounds?  Chatting with some Handstitched Campers brought these 4 strips of patchwork to mind.  Fortunately, the realization came with an idea - cut it up! 

Disappear you 9-patch

With my seam ripper, I divided the strip into 9-patches.  Then I sliced them in half once and then again. This is the disappearing 9-patch technique, a traditional technique I learned awhile back via a do. Good Stitches block.  

Reassembled, the patchwork looks so much more complicated.  Mixing up all those hot, spicey colors also seems to bring it down a notch.  At least a small notch?

and it worked!

And the scale looks good on a journal!  This one I like.

another.

In fact, I liked it enough to give it some Lizzy House pearls.

with pearls

A little tipsy, perhaps, by that success I pulled out another mess of pieced scraps even bigger than the solids patchwork.  It was large triangles of pieced strips cut from making that Sixth Time's the Charm crib quilt over a year ago.  I had stuck the oddly-shaped stuff in a box where it hadn't caught my eye more than once in all that time.

also from pieced scraps

Like I said, don't go looking for pieced scraps.  Or, if you do, it's nice to know that you could throw them together as a journal cover and hope that they'll catch someone's eye.  Anyways, you didn't put much time in them, so there's that.

Guess what?  That's 10 journal covers now complete.  I still feel like I could make these forever, but I also don't want to focus exclusively on making from pieced scraps.  Too limiting I say!  It's always a balance, isn't it?