Grab&Piece

So as I recently posted, I'm working on a scrap quilt in the 'grab & piece' method, and so far, so good. I'm using as much of each pull as I can in each block, before moving on to another. With the first block, which measured 15" x 21", I ended up with just a small pile of neutral strips, which I'll fold into the next pull, rather than return them to the basket.

The second block turned out much larger - 19" x 27" - and reminded me that I didn't have to take TOO big of a handful to make a reasonably sized block.

Block 3 was slightly smaller at 19" x 21". I've been surprised how much white was in my scrap basket!

As I've begun making these blocks, I've also made a few rules for myself:

1. Try to use up each scrap pull into a block, but if the block feels done before all the scraps are used, blend them in with the next scrap pull.
2. No purple, as I'd already been gathering that for a separate project.
3. Just use quilter's cotton; other substrates will be used elsewhere.

Here are my first three blocks up on the design wall. 

TBD what filler I might want or need later on. For now, I'm just making blocks. But let me know in the comments.... do you think a quilt like this is enhanced by added big swaths of color; or do you prefer just the chaotic scrappy blocks?

Tangled Strings

So I left off sharing the front and back of my scrappy strings quilt, and after a couple weeks of hand-quilting, I have a finish!

For quilting, I used two WonderFil threads - primarily Spagetti 12wt SP101 – Ecru, with SP35 – Coral for the occasional accent.

Even though I hand-quilted in my early quilting days, big-stitch quilting is still not my comfort zone, and I had trouble getting stitches straight or even the same size from one section to the next. 

Still, I persevered, and even though I can't say I really enjoyed it, I got 'er done. And honestly, the texture of the finished quilt is something special.

Here's the back, all quilted up!

Once quilted, I trimmed and bound the little (25" x 26") quilt in black, and am relieved to have finished it. I still love the palette, and am happy to have this fourth quilt made primarily from the scrap basket. That part feels especially good.

Controlled Crazy Quilt

I often pick up my copy of Bold Expressions: African American Quilts from the Collection of Corrine Riley: May 15-November 6, 2011 when I need inspiration for a new scrap quilt. So far, it's inspired Octo, Housetops, and Timer. Just as I finished the backing for my most recent scrap quilt, looking through the book inspired me to begin a new controlled crazy quilt. Unfortunately, the sample in the book had no maker listed.

A Google search came up with key characteristics of controlled crazy quilts, and it was surprising how well they 'fit' with the example I'd seen in Bold Expressions. First off - uniform block sizes, which is exactly how I'd started off. Rather than randomly sized blocks like I often do for scrap quilts, I made 9.5" blocks for my new scrap project.

Another characteristic is apparently a restricted color palette, rather than using any fabric available. Though I was pretty randomly using scraps pulled from my scrap basket, I was making sure that each block included black, and hot pink/red/coral. I was also trying to include any random pieced bits or blocks I happened to pull out.

Fabric consistency is another frequent feature of controlled crazy quilt - often sticking to one type of fabric (like all cottons or all silks) rather than mixing velvets, denims, and linens together. My solid scrap basket consists primarily of 100% quilting cotton, though I'm finding the occasional Essex blend and cross weave that I'm including in my blocks as well.

A final characteristic is decorative embroidery stitches stitched over seams to add texture. I'm still debating if my quilt will include any of those embellishments, but it's still nice to remember that those are very common with traditional crazy quilts.

So 30 blocks in, I'm calling it a day, and have pieced the blocks together into a top. Considering the blocks were 9.5" each, the top measures 45.5" x 54.5". I rearranged a few blocks from where they had been on my design wall during block construction, but not many. Now off to see how far I get on a pieced backing from the scraps left hanging out on my cutting table. I'm not necessarily expecting to get the entire back, but we'll see!

Banded

Meet Banded! As much as I love them, scrap quilts always feel like a bit of a workout. I personally don't keep my scraps in a very organized (read: neat and pressed) way, so when it's time to work with them, there's always a lot of pressing, trimming (all those strings!), and overall, digging through the scrap basket. But that aside, it feels great to use them!

For this particular quilt, I used up an entire yard of Kona Haze as background on the front. But other than that, every single bit - blocks, backing, and binding - was from the scrap basket.

Speaking of the back, I first made a panel of all the left over bits from the front. Then, without looking, I grabbed a handful of scraps from the scrap basket, pressed them, and sewed them together. And I did it again. There were a few stragglers from each set that made up a fourth panel. I did it once or twice more, then intentionally looked for any larger pieces to start combining the panels together. The photo below shows the shapes of the final pieced slabs that made up the quilt back.

And the finished back!

For quilting, I went with the fast and no-stress serpentine with an off-white thread. Honestly, I was ready to move on. It wasn't lost on me that I'd spent much more time making the quilt back than on quilting, but so be it.

I knew even before quilting that if I wanted to keep the integrity of the quilt front block design, I would not be trimming this quilt 'square.' I'm not sure what happened to make that so, but I was willing to live with it for this particular 'just for fun' quilt.

So in the end, once bound with leftover binding strips straight from the scrap basket, the quilt measured 47" x 55" x 47" x 58". At least it will make a cozy lap quilt!

Strings

Well, I finally have my first quilt finish for the 100 Day Project/AKA 100 Days of Scraps. Meet Strings, a quilt whose front is made entirely of scrappy strings and other bits from the scrap basket.

Folks have asked, and no, I didn't use a fabric foundation. I just sewed a bunch of strips together, and then added corners. Or sometimes, I actually started with a corner, and added strings from there. I didn't worry too much about the size of each block. I just let the strings I chose to use together determine that.

What that means, is that sometimes I didn't gauge well, and bits I actually liked got trimmed off. Oh well.

Eventually, I had enough blocks to make a good-sized quilt (54" x 55"). You can see that there were places I had to add in pieced strips or much smaller blocks that I made specifically to fill a certain space.

I continued on to make a scrappy quilt back, though I did have to pull a few fabrics from stash to make blocks large enough. Other than that gray solid, all the fabrics I pulled were in pretty short supply, so it felt just fine using them up here.

I think I mentioned that I had a cold that really hung on, and by the time I was feeling up to quilting, I was also in the mood to get this one done. So I chose to quilt using a diagonal serpentine stitch about 1.5" apart. I marked every 3" with my hera marker and quilted those lines, then quilted between them all again by eye. I confess that quilting in that way was relaxing but quick - ie. barely over an hour. This time, for this quilt, it felt just fine.

The thread I used was an Aurifil 50wt variegated 4570 [Silver Fox]. I thought it suited this mostly gray quilt very nicely.

I had just enough of a gray print to make a binding, which I hand-finished. So even though I did end up using a few stash pulls for this quilt, the front is 100% scraps, and what I pulled was 95% used up in the back and binding, so that felt good. All in all, I'm happy with the finish, and plan to donate Strings to our guild's giving committee.

Stash Jazz

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to attend any Seattle MQG giving quilt sew-ins, and finally I decided to just go ahead and make a quilt for them to donate. Some time before her passing last year, Carole Lyles Shaw gave permission for the guild to use her Stash Jazz pattern for giving quilts. I opted to make the 55" x 62" Small Lap Quilt version, though mine actually came out 55" x 58" due to the amount of border fabrics I had. 

The pieced blocks were made totally of scraps; then the solid blocks and borders were from stash.

Honestly, piecing the scrappy slabs was time consuming! I had grabbed my blue and yellow/orange scrap baskets, thinking the quilt top would be primarily blues and oranges. Come to find out, I had more yellow than orange, so that's what ended up happening.

Still, when it was time to cut the solid slabs for each block, I still went with blue and orange - Kona Riviera and Orangeade. Except I didn't have quite what I needed, so the blue corners are actually Kona Ocean, and the orange corner is obviously a print. I think it works, especially since the quilt top is definitely focused on the scraps.

For the back, I started by piecing the leftovers, and added stash prints and solids to bring it up to size.

Early on I knew I wanted to do a grid for quilting, and when I remembered I had a cone of Aurifil 50wt 2225 [Salmon] - thank you Aurifil! - it felt like kismet. And gotta say, quilting went so nicely with my new machine. It gave me a lot of joy to have the quilting go so smoothly.

I had originally planned for a scrappy binding, but once I was trimming the quilt, scrappy didn't feel right. Or at least not with the scraps I had left. Happily, I happened across random pieces of original Cotton + Steel Mesa by Alexa Marcelle Abegg from back in 2014(!!). And I think it's a fun addition.

So thanks to perfect timing, our guild meeting is tonight, and I'll be able to deliver both the Pixie Stix quilt I bound and this Stash Jazz to the Giving Committee for donation. Pretty sure it will go to either Kenmore Senior Women’s Shelter or YWCA Pathways for Women. Perfect.

Linking up with Quilting Jetgirl's Favorite Finish {June 2025}.

Linking up with Quilting & Learning, What a Combo's Free Motion Mavericks.

Vertices

Begun solely as a way to explore a design and use scraps to do so, Vertices ended up being a little more challenging than I expected. Not difficult, really, but not as enjoyable to piece as I expected. Still, I like the finish, and am glad to have tried it. Originally inspired by "Four-Corner Block," a quilt by Florine Taylor in 1987 shown in Roderick Kiracofe's Unconventional & Unexpected. My version is much more chaotic but there are still some similarities, and the inspiration definitely began there.

My goal at the start was to use all my blue scraps, then I added in black and dark gray. Turned out, I didn't have as many as I thought I would in a reasonable size. Same with the lime-ish strings; for those, I actually cut into Konas Acid Lime and Key Lime yardage when I ran out of usable scraps. The quilt finished at 41" x 55", with a back pieced from stashed yardage and matched binding using Acid Lime and Key Lime again.

So yay for a May quilt finish, even though it took most of the month for me to struggle through it. In the end, I'm really quite fond of it.

Linking up with Quilting Jetgirl and Favorite Finish {May 2025}.

Fragments

Ages ago - two years ago maybe? - I hung a small quilt in our Little Free Library. Just 9" x 12", it was begun in September of 2019, on a touring bus, somewhere between Paris and Beaune, France.

Fast forward to this week when I was restocking our LFL, and noticed that the little quilt was gone. No problem. I'm fine that someone claimed it, but it made me think I should hang another quilt up, and see if it finds a new home too. This small (9" x 9") quilt, which I named "Fragments," was created straight from the scrap basket. 

I began with a tiny pieced scrap I'd come across a few weeks ago and kept for just such a time as this.

Bit by bit, it grew...

Until it was large enough, and ready to make a scrappy back, baste, and consider quilting options.

Using Aurifil 50wt 2612 [Arctic Sky], I did angled straight-line quilting, between 1/16" and 1/2" apart. I originally planned on a grid, but actually one direction seemed enough.



A scrappy binding was the obvious choice, and once I got a few photos, I took it right out to hang in our LFL. We'll see if it gets claimed. I should probably put a little sign up to let folks know that would be ok, so I'll give that some thought. Meanwhile, it was a fun little diversion. Now back to work on chair blocks!