Phew, it’s been a while! I’ve been blogging twice a week over at Modern Quilts Unlimited, so while I have been a busy blogger, it’s not been necessarily here. Today, though, I have been asked to be part of the Scrap Quilt Designer Showcase that is being hosted by Persimmon Dreams! Scrap quilts are, for me, a new challenge and delight. As a designer, many times I end up working with complete fabric lines at the request of the company or magazine. Also, my earliest quilts were pretty much just three colors and very spare, and almost always solid fabrics.
For that reason, last year I set myself a personal challenge to mix things up. Time to make quilts that are full of all the prints! I’ve found that the more I can add, the wilder it gets, the more delighted I become!
“Fair Day”, quilt pattern by Amanda Leins For RJR Fabrics. Now I’ve worked out the pattern, I’m eyeing my scrap bin to make a quilt with all my scraps! It will be a great retrospective quilt.
1 1/2″ HSTs. Almost 1500 of them.
What I’ve found is that I love to mix solids in with my prints. As a longarmer, solids give me a space to do neat quilting in have it show. I can use solids to help guide the viewer’s eye around the quilt.
Quilted with a double layer of cotton batting, this is the center of a scrappy medallion in Victoria Findlay Wolfe’s quilt “A Thousand Fibers Connect Us,” part of her show at Festival in 2015.
I can also use them to give the eyes of the viewer a rest. They can make a great statement.
In many scrap quilts, we often see white used as a neutral (partially historical and partially modern) and I love the clean look it gives. Lately, though, I have become more and more drawn to bold colors that act as a great supporting color. “Proud as a Peacock” by RJR is really really striking when used in combination with scraps.
Available online at Pink Castle Fabrics
In particular, I have an awesome scrappy quilt using “Proud as a Peacock” with every one of my DSQ prints. They look amazing together!
Not sure if this is exactly a scrap quilt, but it’s made up of fat quarters, charm packs, jelly rolls, and pretty much whatever I have, so… it counts, right?
Red also is a color that offers a great opportunity to choose a bold color to act as a neutral. I was really struck by how it was used in the new C+S line by Rifle Paper Co.
Spring Quilt Market 2016. That dress! It’s less about the red and more about the print, which made me realize red is a neutral.
Some of the most striking vintage quilts I’ve seen often use red as a key component, and every fabric looks great with it! Check out my pinterest board for scrap quilts for some of my favorites.
Are you a hardcore scrapper? I think I’m more of a scrapper-light, myself.
Spark a conversation!