Got Scraps?

It has been a long time since I made a quilt for our son.  I made a quilt for HIS son when he was born.  In fact I made it from quilt blocks I had embroidered for our son when he was a baby.  I hadn’t really started quilting then and it just didn’t get done.  By the time I started really making quilts, well….. he was a teenager!  He was about 15 the last time I made him a quilt.  That quilt was used and abused and is long gone.  It was an Amish style quilt.  I’m sure in my pre-digital photos there is a photo of that quilt.  If I find it, I will post it in a later post on this quilt.

In the in between time, I have built up a HUGE stash of fabrics both yardage and scraps.  After moving cross country twice in the fast few years with literally TONS of boxes of fabric, I stopped buying fabric unless I knew exactly what the fabric was for.  Well, with the exception of yellow fabrics.  When you see a yellow you like, you’d better buy it.  However, where I used to by a minimum of 3 yards, 7 if I thought it might be a back for a quilt.  Since I fell in love with scrap quilts, I rarely by anything larger than a fat quarter unless the store doesn’t have what I want except on the bolt OR if I know I’ll need more for a particular quilt.

If you are familiar with Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville and her Scrap Users System, you night recognize this pattern as Bricks and Stepping Stones.  However, I’ve used 2-1/2” squares for the 4-patch blocks and 4-1/2” x 8-1/2” for the bricks.  Actually I started using this size squares as leaders and enders (see Bonnie’s website http://quiltville.com ) making random 4-patch blocks.  When there were a large number of these in a basket, I had to figure out what to do with them.  That’s how this quilt got its start.

There will be follow-up posts on this quilt as it progresses.  So far it is just pieces on the design wall as I am now making specific colors of 4-patch blocks to fill in.  Even with what I thought was a large number of these blocks, I was short some colors to complete the quilt. though some of the bricks look like they are navy, they are really black or at least I thought they were.  Looking at the pictures, I'm going to have to check that out.  Some of the black prints did have blue prints in them so it may be those that appear to be navy in the photo.

If you have made a scrap quilt, please feel free to share a picture of it with me or just post a comment about it.  If you have a burgeoning scrap collection, start thinking scrap quilt and use those scraps.  You paid as much for the left over fabrics from quilts as you did for what you used, so use them for a unique scrap quilt of your own.

If you “got scraps” make a quilt!

Until next time,

Lois