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.

Half-Square Triangles with Blacks, Whites, Strawberries, Daisies and Baskets!

   Fabrics with berries have always been a favorite of mine, and I couldn't resist the black and white fabrics with the bright red strawberries. I held on to them for a while, not sure what to do with them, but enjoying them immensely just the same.
    One day, I saw a dynamic quilt in a magazine made out of half-square triangles, and thought I'd try it with this fabric. I pulled fabrics from my stash to go with the prints, and committed to a dark/light color scheme with black, white, red, green and yellow. Some browns were allowed in as part of the yellow family. No blues or purples thought! Here's the quilt...or part of it. The portion to the right represents about a quarter of the blocks that I have.
   To start, the fabric was cut into 4 1/2" squares, a diagonal line was drawn on the backs of the lighter squares, and two lines were stitched on each square: each 1/4" from the line that was drawn.

A Bright and Geometric Scrap Quilt with Mostly 2 1/2" Strips

   For the life of me, I don't understand why these blocks aren't called Square in a Square! But, they aren't...I'm not really sure if they have a name, but they are basically pattern for the first round of Courthouse Step blocks. The center squares were cut to 3 1/2" and the strips were sewn on opposite sides of that square, trimmed, then sewn in two rows across the top and bottom of the block. The block size is 7" finished.
   Of course, the quilt is perfect to create from your favorite fabric scraps...you only need 22" x 2 1/2" of fabric, in pieces as small as 7 1/2" (2 of them) and 2 1/2"(2 of them), which is just a strip cut on the long side of a fat quarter! In fact, a fat quarter will supply the outer square fabric for 7 blocks.