I turned all the waste triangles — well, 48 of the 52; I mangled one triangle in the machine and so threw away three more to make it an even 48 — into small squares, as illustrated in my first post.
If I’m going to have fabric left over I’d rather be left with a usefully-sized continuous piece of backing fabric than a huge pile of tiny triangles, so I decided to turn them into 12 pinwheel blocks (I’m sure that’s not their proper name but oh well).
These are not precision-sewn elements. Since this was the waste half of the squares and I eyeballed the sewing line, they vary slightly in size and are often not perfectly square. But they’re usable in a low-precision context.
I decided to do sew a bunch together vertically as an interesting element on the back of the quilt, with the backing fabric on either side so nothing has to line up too exactly. This won’t use up all 12 blocks — each is about 7.25″ square (…square-ish) and the quilt top is about 45″ so I’ll need about seven of them. I sewed eight, though, so I don’t have to worry about being very precise about the ends.
I turned the last four into a square which will end up as a cat mat or something like that. It’s pretty wonky but the cats won’t mind (probably). Mostly they sit on folded-up old towels so hopefully they’ll see this as an upgrade.
Here’s the backing fabric with the triangle strip inserted. I eyeballed the proportions, pretty much; there’s no math here. Clearly it needs another good pressing before being quilted!
Next up: turning it all into an actual quilt.
Tres charmant! Je l’adore!
Exactly what you do with leftover bits! A custom backing!