Piecing the Pieces

One of my little "signatures", which I will often include in a quilt is what I call Piecing the Pieces. If you examine many old quilts you will often see that some of the pieces in a quilt block have a little seam in them. You might not even notice until you look closely, but I have seen this many times in vintage quilts. The reason for this is simple; a quilter might not have a big enough piece of fabric from which to cut her squares, but she could sew together two smaller pieces to be able to cut out her larger one. I do this myself out of necessity sometimes, especially if I'm making a scrap quilt.This is actually a preference for me if I'm making a quilt for charity. Not to be cheap, but I can't afford to spend a lot of money on every quilt I make, so if I can squeeze out enough blocks to make an attractive quilt without having to run to the fabric store, I will always do so. Besides, I think it adds to the charm. I first noticed pieced pieces when I was closely examining a quilt made by my great-grandmother, who lived on a ranch in Montana in the early part of the last century. She certainly couldn't run out to the quilt shop, because there weren't any! Since then I've spotted this little trick in many older quilts.
This is just something to keep in mind, and I can pretty much assure you that no one will notice, especially if you're using a print. And if it can keep you from panicking when you start to run out of a fabric, then so much the better.