Tag Archives: Scrap Quilt

Jewel Box

March 22, 2021UncategorizedDenyse Schmidt Fabric, Scrap QuiltBrooklyn Quilting Co.

I think most of my life as a quilt maker has been spent making scrap quilts. I’m fine with this. In fact, I think I excel at scrap quilts, if I do say so myself. I love making them and the satisfaction I get from seeing my scrap bags whittled down is high.

My latest quilt is, you guessed it, a scrap quilt. This one is quickly rising to the top of my favorite quilts.

JewelBox 1

It is made with all Denyse Schmidt fabric, which I think really stands out with the black background – like little jewel boxes.

JewelBox 4

These blocks were possible because I save ALL the small pieces of scrap fabric – pieces that most people would probably throw away. Those little corners are only 1”x1” finished squares.

JewelBox 7

I know some quilters don’t like saving small scraps, or some trim all their scraps to 5” squares, but not I. Maybe it’s the frugal person in me or just that feeling knowing there is something I will be able to use a little scrap of fabric for, that I can’t toss them. And saving small scraps pays off big time when you can make something like this out of them.

JewelBox 5

When I started this quilt I hadn’t planned for it to become this big, but I realized I already had a quilt back I could use – a vintage bedsheet that pairs perfectly – so like the crazy person I am I made 21 more blocks. I wanted to use most of the sheet so there wouldn’t be much waste (hello frugal me again) so I made more blocks and will only have to trim the back once I’m done quilting it. Plus, I had more than enough scraps to make more blocks so it all worked out.

JewelBox 6

I have already started quilting this one and I can’t wait to show you the finished quilt with the very cool vintage bedsheet as the back.

Rafter

July 13, 2020UncategorizedRainbow Quilt, Scrap Quilt, Tula PinkBrooklyn Quilting Co.

Sometimes I have a quilt idea in my head and I miraculously manage to execute it exactly how I was thinking, without making adjustments along the way. This is one of those times. It took some planning but I did it.

Rft 5

This quilt utilizes two of my favorite things: rainbow colors and scraps. Yes, your read that right, this is actually a scrap quilt.

Rft 3

Every piece of fabric, minus the purple Tula Pink Fairy Dust fabric, is all scraps.

Rft 4

I think many of us quilters have white fabric laying around, and then it was only a matter of digging through my scrap bag to pull ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) colors to get the rainbow look. This is why I save small scraps! For projects like this. Plus, I hate wasting fabric so I always have a healthy scrap bag ready to go.

Rft 8

I am planning to write a whole blog post about my scrap quilting process, which I kinda take pride in because I have a philosophy of leaving no scrap behind. That blog post is coming in the near future, but back to this quilt.

Rft 2

The only fabric I had to buy was the Tula Pink Fairy Dust, which I wanted to get anyway. From the minute I saw it I knew I had to have it, and I think it is perfect for this quilt.

Rft 6

Tula has since come out with more color options for Fairy Dust, and so many of them would work, but I’m partial to the purple.

Rft 1

With all of the colors happening on the front, I need to start thinking about the back. Not sure which direction I’m going to go yet, but I feel like it needs to be Tula on the back as well. Thoughts?

Crossroads to Texas?

August 12, 2019UncategorizedCotton + Steel Fabric, Cotton and Steel Fabric, Scrap QuiltBrooklyn Quilting Co.

Remember earlier this year when I mentioned I was feeling inspired in 2019 by vintage quilts and had a bunch I wanted to recreate or make my own version of? Well, this is one of them.

I can’t remember where I saw the original version of this quilt, but I filed it away in my brain and knew it was one that I wanted to try and make myself.

Notice that I titled this post Crossroads to Texas with a question mark. I think that’s the name of this block, but if anyone knows better please weigh in. It’s not one that you see often or is as well-known as other quilt blocks, so I’m not entirely sure it’s correct.

I like this pattern because I think it looks good using a mishmash of fabrics (a.k.a. sew your stash), and that’s exactly what I did. I had a bunch of Cotton + Steel and a few other stray fabrics that I pulled together. The pieces are pretty small so it’s an opportunity to use up some of those smaller scraps we all have.

A warning about this block: It is more labor-intensive than other quilt blocks, but I think it’s worth the effort. It’s also one that requires precise cutting and sewing. I had a few blocks that got a little wonky. I fixed that ones that bothered me, but there were a couple others I left alone because I didn’t think they were that bad and they add character, right? Lol.

One last thing before I go. If you look closely you’ll notice that a few blocks are scrappy. I actually did a couple of them scrappy on purpose, and then a couple others I had to make scrappy because I ran out of fabric and had to improvise. But quite frankly, that’s some of my favorite kind of quilting. Cheers!

MSP Factory – Finished

January 9, 2019UncategorizedDenyse Schmidt Fabric, Scrap QuiltBrooklyn Quilting Co.

Happy 2019! We made it to the new year. Always have to be thankful for that.

First up for 2019 is a quilt I finished last year and photographed in November, hence the beautiful fall foliage in the pictures. I was planning to get this posted last year, but sometimes time just gets away from you.

I made this quilt top back in 2017 when it was my year of ‘using what I had,’ which basically meant I was trying to sew my stash and buy as little fabric as possible.

This quilt uses all Denyse Schmidt fabric. I have a huge DS Quilts fabric collection, including lots of smaller scraps, so this quilt was designed specifically for the purpose of trying to use some of the smaller scraps up.

I chose a few different fabric color families to include in the quilt and then picked equal amounts of fabrics for each of the color to use.

For example, I used a pink/purple(ish) color, a lighter pink, orange, yellow, blue, etc.

When paired with the Kona Cotton white it definitely makes the colors pop.

The back of the quilt also uses Denyse Schmidt fabric. I had a couple larger pieces of DS Quilts fabric from her Joann Fabrics collections that I pieced together along with a piece of Kona Cotton Windsor.

The binding is DS Quilts fabric as well. In this image you only see one of the binding fabrics but it actually is a scrappy binding.

I haven’t don’t a scrappy binding in a while and I forgot how much I like it!

That’s a wrap on this quilt. I have some other projects filed away and will be ready to share them here soon. Can’t wait to show you what I’m working on in 2019!

Rainbow Scrap Quilt

November 20, 2017UncategorizedRainbow Quilt, Scrap QuiltBrooklyn Quilting Co.

This year is quickly coming to an end and I have made major headway sewing down my scrap bag in 2017. And oh, does it feel so good. There’s nothing like the satisfaction of seeing my overflowing scrap bag – or maybe I should say scrap bags – dwindle down.

Today is one of those days where I get to share a scrap bag turned scrap quilt success story. What started as a flicker of an idea in my head turned into this:

I started this one weekend in August thinking I would throw together a quick project, but it ended up being bigger and more time consuming than I had planned on. Once I started, I realized I needed to make the quilt larger to really show off the rainbow spectrum of colors. It was worth the time and effort.

I’m going to write a whole blog post about how to make a good scrap quilt, but in the meantime here’s a little tip: When combing scraps from different collections that otherwise wouldn’t mesh, put them in color order. Red, orange, yellow, green blue, indigo and violet (ROYGBIV). That’s what I did with this quilt and it worked.

Sometimes when you try combining scraps from different designers/manufacturers they can look like a mess; they just don’t go together. But when you put them in rainbow order…voila!

Works like a charm every time.

Plus, who doesn’t love a rainbow?!?!

That’s it for this week but I’ll see you back here after Thanksgiving. I’m working on my 2017 holiday gift guide and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Friends On The Way

April 10, 2017UncategorizedDenyse Schmidt Fabric, Rainbow Quilt, Scrap QuiltBrooklyn Quilting Co.

I have officially deemed this year the year of ‘using what I have.’ I know it’s already April, but I have been living this theme since January; I just haven’t put it into writing until now. I mentioned it in my last blog post and I am sticking with it. 2017 is all about using the fabric I have instead of buying more fabric, or at least buying as little fabric as possible.

So far it’s going well and has me thinking creatively, like the scrappy triangles I put together for my Stonington quilt. That’s a good thing. Sometimes your best work comes from having limited options instead of unlimited ones.

So on that note, I introduce my latest ‘using what I have’ quilt.

This is one of the scrappiest quilts I’ve ever made. And I mean I was really digging through my pile of solid colored scraps to come up with the right (or as close to right as possible) solids to bring it all together.

I wanted to do a rainbow quilt and was pretty sure I had a whole rainbow of solid scraps to make that happen. And I did! But the solids are not perfectly matchy matchy.

If you look closely, there are varying shades of color for some of the smaller solid triangles. The pink, the purple, the blue and the yellow all have different shades. That’s because I didn’t have enough scraps to make them the same.

I actually think the different shades work and I’m pretty happy with that look.

Another good thing about this quilt is that it didn’t take me long to make it, because almost half of the triangles were already cut.

There’s a years long Denyse Schmidt quilt I’m working on that has me accumulating leftover triangles. (I really should write about that project but more on that another time.) Anyway, that multi-year Denyse Schmidt quilt means I have A LOT of DS fabric. Like boxes of her fabric. And I want to use this fabric, but first I wanted to use some of those triangles I had already cut.