Scrap Garden

I'm so pleased to finally share Scrap Garden!  I started it in January 2020 as a scrap mitigation attempt.  I posted about it here, then never shared progress.  I'm sharing now, in the current issue of Make Modern magazine.

When I started sewing with my green scraps to try to whittle down the stack, I had no plan.  I thought 16-patches would be quick and gobble scraps so started sewing a bunch of those.  Some are strip pieced using scraps strips.  Others are pieced from individual squares.  Some are a combination, made from strip-pieced 4-patches.  I even made a few blocks combining 4-patches and plain squares.  All the options are described in the pattern, so you can use the method best suited to your scraps.

I added the shadows for interest.  The shadow pieces are strip pieced.  That's so mush faster than sewing individual squares of background to strips of shadow.  I'm glad I had nice big pieces of the grey Stonehenge left over from a backing to allow for strip piecing. 

The yardage of  Moda Grunge Metropolis Fog I found in my stash was perfect for the background.  It lets the blocks stand out, but isn't as stark as a solid would have been.  It looks comfortably scuffed and used, rather like my clothing does after an afternoon digging in the garden.

The little pops of red/orange/yellow in the cornerstones were thrown in to spice things up a bit.  It still amazes me to see how just a tiny bit of another color, yellow especially, can make make all the rest more interesting.  In this case, it helped give the quilt a name.  For some reason, the cornerstone colours made me think of peppers.  When a friend mentioned that the design reminded her of square-foot gardens, I knew this was a garden themed quilt!

I really didn't want to pull the focus away from all the scrappy goodness in this quilt, so I kept the quilting simple. I quilted a circle, a little off center, and just echoed it until the quilt was covered. I think it adds a little movement and interest without overwhelming the simple piecing.

How about a scrappy binding to finish?

Circling back to the scrap mitigation project that led to this quilt:  though my scrap bins look as full as ever, I know I must have made a dent because the only fabric I bought specifically for this project was a little extra Moda Grunge for the borders.  Even the back and binding are pieced from leftovers from other quilts.  

Make Modern issue 39 is available now.  Click here to purchase yours.  Make Modern is a digital publication delivered as a PDF, so you get instant access.  The link to my copy just arrived as I was writing this post, and I can confirm it is full of eye candy, patterns and lots of informative articles as well.

None of which Rosie cares about.  She just wants to know if this quilt is hers.  It's not.  It's mine.  All mine! Though I might share while I'm curled up on the couch plotting this spring's gardening...