Stripey Scrap Quilt - Step 2

Lots of you said you wanted to make a quilt with me. Yay! So here we go with step 2. (In case you missed it, the original post was here and the first step was to start pressing your scraps and sorting them into colors.)
I asked you not to start designing your quilt yet, so you can let your design be guided by what you have on hand. Today we're going to start assessing what you have and thinking about design - but I piece these quilts improvisationally. I love the freedom of working without a set design, but I do find that it helps to have some guidelines and/or restrictions.

For this quilt, start cutting your scraps into strips 6, 4, or 2 inches wide and as long as possible.  Square off the ends so the pieces are rectangles. (I have a video here about basic rotary cutting tools and here about cutting strips. Do you all want a video specifically about cutting these strips from scraps? Just let me know, and if there's enough interest I'll put one together.)

Don't cut all your fabric into strips yet - just a small pile from a few colors. You can play around with these strips to see what kind of arrangement you might like. I've sketched up a few basic layouts with these strips and colored it in to give you some ideas about different effects - but before you make a final decision you'll want to try things out with real fabric in the colors you have. The super easy improvisational piecing technique I'm going to teach you can result in totally different looks, depending on your fabric choices and how you arrange them.

Some people favor the totally scrappy approach - and that certainly has its charms.

For this effect I just put the colors together in a totally random assortment. There's some organziation in the way all the 2 inch strips are pieced into one long row, all the 4 inches in another row, and all the 6 inches in their own rows - but mostly it's a delightful tumble. This is mostly bright colors - but don't be afraid to mix in some neutrals. See that there are some brown, black and tan blocks? It can help to keep things grounded - if you want that.

A lot of traditional scrap quilts impose some order by mixing the scraps with a solid - like the white in this quilt.

I played a bit with that idea in this arrangement.

Scraps alternate with white blocks in an arrangement that still feels modern (and would be easy and forgiving to piece) - but that's a little more sedate than the totally scrappy look in the first sketch. Instead of white, how about a dark charcoal gray? Or a chocolate brown? That might look like a sundae with sprinkles!

But maybe you don't want to add an additional fabric? Maybe you want to work entirely with the scraps that you have but with more structure than the totally scrappy look?

This is the arrangement I'll be using for my quilt. I have a ton of cool colors in my stash - my purple, blue and green baskets are all overflowing. I'll piece all the green strips into columns, all the blue strips into columns, and all the purple strips into columns (all of varying widths) and then I'll play with moving the columns around until I'm happy with the way they look. This is how I made the quilt pictured at the top of the post - except that one used all warm colors.

Maybe you want even more control? How about limiting your palette to just two colors?

I imagined this quilt made with all my black and dark gray fabrics with the occasional strip of pink scraps running through it. This is a great solution if you tend to really favor one color over all the others and have a ton of scraps in that one color. This would also be a great way to make a more sophisticated sports-themed quilt. A blue and white quilt for a Colts fan, for example, without actually using licensed Colts fabric.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I just wanted to give you a few ideas to get you thinking about different arrangements. Think about what level of control most appeals to you and then start playing around with actual blocks. Don't sew them together yet, just try laying them out in different arrangements to see what works. Take pictures as you go and post them to the sewing group on Flickr. If you get stuck or torn between a few ideas, post some pictures with your thoughts in the comments and shoot me an email. I can direct the whole group there to offer advice and help you out. This is a terrific group for that!

Happy sewing! Be back soon with piecing instructions!

Best,

Wendi