Scrap Quilting

Scrap quilting is the most ingenious trick I play on myself. You see, sometimes I need to clean out and organize my fabric shelves. Well, actually, most of the time. Patchwork is messy, especially scrappy patchwork, because it uses lots of different fabrics. I have found I can trick myself into getting my shelves organized by incorporating some sort of scrap piecing project. The ones that require the most fabrics cause me to pull all my fabrics off the shelves, cut from them, refold them, and tidy everything up. And I do love scrappy quilts!


We just got back from a little Spring Break trip to Los Angeles, and I was looking forward to spending some quality time, alone, in my studio, not talking to other people, looking at addresses, and trying to navigate around a city I don’t know. (I am a very introverted extrovert.) The scrap quilt project I chose to work on didn’t require loads of planning. It was also the type I could jump into right away and just start making, or leave and come back to. And the biggest bonus, one that would allow me to catch up on all the reality tv I’d missed while we were gone, so thinking hard was not an option either.

Anita Grossman Solomon’s Craftsy class, Quick Techniques for Classic Blocks, is the perfect start. Her square-on-point block method, one of the blocks she covers in the class, uses her trademarked Make it Simpler method. Basically, fabrics are layered and topped with a paper template which you cut everything out by. There was no real measuring, nothing to be super precise about.
In fact, my only issue with keeping the volume on the iPad turned up so I could hear it over the sewing machine.
To begin, I took stacks of fabrics from my shelves and rough cut a 8″ block of each to use in this completely scrappy quilt. Because I keep everything stacked by color, all the fabrics in the quilt so far are predominately warm tones in yellows, oranges, pinks, and reds. That was a complete accident, but once I realized what was happening, I just went with it. And the quilt top grew from there.

I’m not sure what it is about turning a square on point that makes it so much more interesting, but it is. Could be the scraps, but to me the angle makes it very cool. Very simple construction, one of those quilt projects you can make quickly. I was actually thinking I’d make a warm-toned version and a cool-toned version. We’ll see!