More Quilts from Scraps

Anyone who's been following me for a while knows that I love the look of scrappy quilts. For the past couple of years, I've been cutting and sorting my scraps as I go into squares and strips. My guide for this has been Bonnie Hunter from Quiltville and here's how she cuts and organizes her scraps with her Scrap User's System.
Scrappy four patch squares
 My scraps are sorted into 1.5", 2", 2.5", 3" and 5" squares. I also save strips, but most are 2.25" and 2.5" and I put them all together in one place.
Scrappy doll quilt (see tutorial here)
Do you recognize this one? It's the same as the Americana Doll Quilt I have in my tutorials. An autumn coloured print fat quarter was just enough fabric for the sashing and borders and the scrappy four patches look great, even though they don't match at all! It always amazed me that the same pattern can look so different depending on fabric choices.

Scrappy four patch Doll Quilt
I have a few of Bonnie Hunter's books and have a few patterns bookmarked for sometime in the future. In the meantime, I've been piecing little 4-patches as leaders and enders between my regular piecing. When I have enough to make something larger, I'll pause the regular quilting and have some fun sewing together some small doll-size quilts.

What do you do with your scraps? What's the smallest piece you save? Inquiring minds want to know!

--Ann

Comments

  1. Colleen20 September 2013 at 10:09

    I have a similar system and the smallest I save is 1 1/2". Realistically, I think I probably could eliminate that size and go only to 2". I still haven't done anything with the scraps yet because it looks so jumbled when I try to pair them. I think I need to cut up more neutrals or creams to go with them before I could accept that all that work would yield something beautiful. Saying that, I look at yours or Bonnie's results and think they are just beautiful. Perhaps after working with a certain fabric, I get bored with it and can't see it's beauty by the time I'm dealing with scraps.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pink Chevron Quilt Tutorial

Image
This is a little quilt I made for my newest grandbaby and I promised a tutorial for all of you. Materials required: 50 pink charm squares (5") 50 white or cream charm squares (5") Batting Backing Binding - approximately 170" length (Here's a great place to get your charms - SewFunQuilts on Etsy - $6.85 US for a pack of 30 squares) I used a fat eighth pack of 12 different pink fabrics and a piece of pink from my stash. It was enough for the 50 charm squares and the binding. A fat eighth is 9"x22" and you can get four 5" squares and one 2.25" binding strip from each with a 2" - 2.25" strip left over. Match each pink charm square with a white charm square. Draw a diagonal line through the center and sew a quarter inch seam on either side of your drawn line. Cut apart on your drawn line and press towards the pink fabric. Take all your pink/white squares and lay them out in a chevron pattern. There will be no need to trim to si
Read more

Blue Jean Quilt

Image
Pinterest is a great place for inspiration and I saw this quilt and quickly pinned it, knowing I would be back to make it. The pattern is found in Fons and Porter's Easy Quilts, Spring 2014 edition. Last week, I checked the magazines when I bought my groceries and bought the magazine. I think I could have figured it out on my own, but it's always nice to have a new magazine or two to browse through! I traced the circle template onto some template plastic that I've had for a very long time and dug my stack of old jeans out of the back of the closet. I found a video to play in the background while I traced and cut and in a few hours, I had 168 circles cut from my stack of blue jeans.  The thing that caught my eye about this particular jean quilt was the bright colored fabrics that were peeking out from between the blue jean circles. I have a lot of fat quarters and fabric scraps, but I also had 4 packs of charm squares from Moda's Basic Grey collectio
Read more

Fruit Pie Potholders or Hotpads Tutorial

Image
Last fall my mom was making a few of these for her local quilt show and sale. I thought they were pretty cool and have been keeping my eyes open for fruit themed fabric just in case I wanted to make a few. Pear Pie Hot Pad or Pot Holder At the end of May at Calgary's Heritage Park's Gathering of the Guilds quilt show, I found some great fruit fat quarters and they followed me home! I already had a tan colored fabric that could be used for the lattice pie crust, some insulbrite and cotton batting and a quick trip into Fabricland netted the shining heat resistant fabric (normally seen on ironing board covers) that would be the pie pan backing. Cutting Directions: I'm not much for finding a pattern for something that I can figure out, so I made a circle template from a piece of cardboard that was about 9" in diameter. For each pie, I cut 1 fruit fabric, 1 insulbrite batting, 1 cotton batting and 1 shiny fabric from the circle pattern. Pieces cut for pie pot hol
Read more