Scrappy Quilt

This fun project will never be duplicated! With no two scrap quilts the same, you will never have to worry about remembering the pattern. In my case, I had some scraps, but ended up shopping for scraps - at yard sales, thrift stores, and sale corners of quilt shops.

With a Scrappy Quilt, there isn't any set way to plan it out. Color schemes or patterns are up to you. Usually, this quilt is a combination of whatever scraps you have, the only issue may be the final size your are looking to make. The only thing to remember is that your material pieces need to be big enough to support 1/4'' seems.

With most fabrics, there is a right and wrong side. In these two pictures, you can see that the right side has brighter colors, while the wrong side looks faded. I just want to make sure everyone knows this - so that when I say "sew rights sides together and iron open", it all works out.

In my case I had several triangular pieces I wanted to integrate into my quilt. Somewhat quickly, I found that this was the most difficult to figure out, so that's why I decided to show this step by step. Every other section should be pretty straight forward as long as you keep each section, or block, as square as you can. So, I started by laying my first two pieces next to each other on my table, right side up to see how I wanted to place them. Next, I put the piece right sides together, and started sewing. Keeping a 1/4" seem allowance is what I had, because it's what I learned and what MOST people use for any type of sewing. Just keep in mind that 1/4" is just the width of the presser foot. (I had a little extra of the light color hanging over because it had frayed edge I didn't want to get too close on, but also to show it in the pictures.) Then, once the two pieces of fabric are sewn together, open them up, and iron. You can see the difference between ironed and not. I never realized how important this last step was until this quilt. If you don't iron, there will be many puckering issues along the way.

The next step I simply sewed two strips of material together. But before I did, I cut the strings you see in the picture to help keep it neat and clean. Then I sewed them together to attach to the previous piece. Just before opening up the fabric, I cut the red and what materials a little longer then the mint greed I attached it too with scissors. I used scissors because sometimes I find it's a little easier then getting out the rotary cutter, but also I'll take care if using that later on. Again, remember to iron your fabric, before and after sewing.

I tend to like angles, and that's why I ended up using the triangular pieces the way I did. Instead of making squares with them, because I didn't have that many of them, I just sewed strips onto the triangular piece. As you can see here, I placed the blue star patterned piece to the left of the black and gold piece. I had to flip it around a little to sew on the left side, where my finger is, but it worked out. After I sewed the new piece on, I ironed the whole piece again.

On the right side of the block, I added a nice bright piece of material. I first laid it out to see how it would look next to the black, then put right sides together and sewed a nice, straight line as I have in the past. Then opening it up, I ironed the material to keep it nice and flat.

As with steps past, I simply took strip and added it on, going back to the left side of the block. I used this large piece to help square off this block later. Then I added a red piece that fit a bit awkwardly, so I ended up with a fold, so I added an additional piece to make sure the fold stayed in tack. I believe in what the Amish say, or do, that to have a"perfect" quilt is to try to be like or better then God. So they leave in one one mistake.

In this step, I used one long strip of material to add to the left side of my block. This piece needed to be the at least the length of my block, but was actually much more then I needed. I sewed it to my block as I did the others, but before opening up and ironing flat, I cut the excess material off from the other pieces. This is where the rotary cutter, cutting matte and clear rulers (as I call them) come in. Simply lay your ruler over the last strip you added -making sure it is still in the position it was coming off the sewing machine, and while leaving the 1/4" seam allowance, cut the excess material off.

In this last step, I added two pieces, the red one and the teal pattern. It just felt like the block needed to have something more - and these two pieces fit the bill. Then I trimmed up the edges to make it as square as I could. In the pictures, the last thing I did was to cut the last long strip of material square at the bottom to the red piece.

The images here are some other pieces I made for the quilt. All told, this quilt is not difficult, but it does take a little planning. I was able to find some pieces that someone else had put together, and used those pieces as bases for larger blocks to sew together for a queen size quilt.

For this quilt, the backing is a blue and green print. The batting I use regularly is by a company called Heirloom, it's just the one that I have been using for years and find that it is lightweight, warm, and durable. First lay your backing right side down. Then lay on top of that the batting about an 1" - 1 1/2 " from the edge of the backing. Then lay the quilted top down on top of the batting, right side up.

Either option will have the backing, batting, and the sewn quilt top. But the difference is how you connect all three layers. "Quilting" involves a long arm machine that has the backing rolled onto one roll, the batting rolled on a second roll, and the sewn top on the top. Then all three pieces will be unrolled layering the three in the right order to have the backing on the back, batting in the middle and the sewn piece on top. While the quilt is rolled out onto a frame, coming off the rolled mentioned, the long arm machine will be used to create a given pattern with thread to sew the three layers together over the entire quilt in a neutral color to the quilt. My quilt is is being done in this manner.

So, I will admit here - I am using a different quilt here to demonstrate Tying. As you can see, there is a black yarn that is being strategically placed across the quilt to connect all three layers. Usually this is the method used when there isn't a long arm machine to use. This is the way I learned how to quilt, and have made most of my quilts using tying rather than long arm quilting.

Now back to the quilt we started with. As you can see, the three layers, backing, batting, and sewn top, are laid out and either machine quilted or tied together. That's a bit important at this point because if the three layers aren't tied or quilted, the batting will move around with use and washing. So, make sure to the the sewn top is exactly on top of the batting. Then fold the backing over in half - so if your backing is 1" off the batting and top, fold in half to 1/2". Finally, you will fold the binding over onto the top of the quilt, so you have a 1/2" of the backing on the top of the quilt. To attach this - all you need to do is sew a straight line in the center of the binding - basically at the 1/4" mark, all the way around your quilt.

In the end, your quilt will not look like mine, but the process is the same. But, you can use the same techniques to get your own results.

Enjoy playing with Quilting!!