Monday, November 7, 2011

Easy Scrap Quilt with Floral Fabrics From Your Stash That Didn't Really Go Together at First Glance

   Sometimes you have fabrics that you really like, but you don't have anything special to do with them. So, they sit, and you know they will most likely never leave your stash, especially if you only have small amounts of them. That's why it's important to go through your stash occasionally, enjoying and touching your fabrics.
   For this quilt, I had several pretty floral prints, and just wanted to get them used up. The blocks in a sweet little Leisure Arts book, Wonderblocks by Terry Martin helped me on my way! Used copies are available online from Amazon I chose the big 12" blocks because I figured the quilt would be finished faster! To make this quilt simple, I cut a bunch of 4 1/2" strips, and further cut those into 12 1/2", 8 1/2", 6 1/2" and 4 1/2" pieces. If I had enough fabric, I cut a few 8 1/2" squares, but nothing bigger. I kept returning to my scraps for bits and pieces that would go with the quilt.
   Because there were florals, I was able to add some greens, although mostly softer and sagey greens. One of the florals had some lavender, so I pulled in some lavender fabric, and there was some coral and light orange as well, so I was able to add those colors, too.
   Once I started making the blocks, in a more-or-less random manner, I actually started liking the effect, and wanted to show the blocks off. That's when I decided to pull out one of the darker shades of lavender, and use the purple fabric for the boarder. To add even more interest, I set the blocks on point and used setting triangles to create the boarder, then added another straight boarder of that same purple fabric as also illustrated in the book.
   Even though I'd never done free motion feathers, I figured...why not try? It was a throw away project anyway, and I jumped in and tried it. Finally, I had a gorgous dark coral Kaffe Fassett print that I used for the binding. I love this quilt, even though it didn't have very much respect in the beginning!

2 comments:

  1. I really need to use my stash more. It's always so exciting to explore new fabric options. Problem is, there are so many to choose from and new ones coming out almost every month! The lottery win would look really good to me right now, although I'm afraid I'd dump way to much on fabric! Okay, maybe a new machine too. I'm practicing quilting on my machine, and got a couple of DVD's to learn from. Leah Day from her blog has been doing a series of 365 days of design and has amazing posts on You Tube to learn from. Have a great Tuesday.

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  2. I am working on a scrap quilt right now. It is hard to know what fabrics work well together. I will have to pull some floral and see if can make it work like yours. thanks

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