Quilter’s Scrapbook in Blogger’s Quit Festival

It’s Blogger’s Quit Festival time again.  This time around I’ve decided to enter Quilter’s Scrapbook in the Scrappy category.  If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve seen this one before.  I love it because it has a scrap of just about every project I made in my first 13 years of quilting.  I have to think a bit harder for some fabrics than others, but I can still identify which project most scraps came from.



When I started cutting down my scraps into strips, squares and rectangles a few years back, I cut 1 1/2” squares from the smallest scraps.  Once I had a pile of them, I felt ridiculous.  Seriously, when was I going to use those small bits?  I’m not a very scrappy quilter.  I work well with matchy-matchy, organised designs. and all those varied bits were all so…NOT matchy matchy!  Plus they were so small!

I held on to the box of little squares a little longer.  Just as I was about to throw them away, I saw a picture of a quilt made of 144-patch blocks.  All those little disparate bits in each block looked fantastic together and I started thinking that perhaps I could use my tiny squares after all.

In the end I made 100-patch blocks, making a conscious effort to not try to match fabrics as I sewed squares together. After the blocks were made I dressed things up a little with pieced sashing and a pieced border.  I waited until the blocks were done before choosing the sashing and border fabrics.  Once the blocks were made I had a better idea what colours would set them off well.



I quilted it very simply using my walking foot to quilt straight lines. What you see in the block above was Take 3.  I forget what else I tried, but I do remember picking out whatever my first two ideas for quilting the blocks were!  I knew exactly how I wanted to quilt the border, but it was tedious and I didn’t get a good rhythm going until I was onto the last side.  I think it was worth it though.

This is possibly my favourite quilt so far (well, at least until I put it away and pull out another favourite for a little while!)  It measures 59” x 73”, just perfect for curling up under on the couch.  It’s not quite big enough to drape over my queen bed, but it has been used on top of bigger quilts for an extra layer on colder nights.

I released the pattern for this quilt last January.  I have since updated the pattern to include instructions for strip piecing the blocks as well as those for piecing individual squares.  It is one of my most popular patterns, available in my Etsy shop.



Hop on over to the festival to see all the other lovely quilts. You can nominate your favorite entry for Viewer’s Choice until October 31, then go back and vote for Viewer’s Choice and your favorite quilt in each category between November 1 and November 7.  Enjoy browsing the eye candy!