Do You Need to Plan a Scrap Quilt?
I was thinking of a topic to talk about today as I am designing a new scrap quilt and wondered.... should you "plan" a scrap quilt or not?
A true scrap quilt is not planned in my opinon. I have designed scrap quilts before one block at a time, pulling different colors from my scrap bag as I go to construct each block. It's a fun way to use up scraps and make a "unique" quilt, however, it's quite hard to write a pattern like that.
Here is an example of an "unplanned" scrap quilt. This is a portion of a quilt hanging on my sewing room wall.
Notice how each star has completely different fabrics for just about every piece. Can you imagine how hard it would be to write this pattern or buy fabric for it? This would be an example of the type of quilt you would assemble from a scrap bag, pulling separate pieces out for each piece of each block.
Now here is a photo of one of my "planned" scrap quilts called Basket Weave Stars.
For this pattern, I listed the fabric needed as eight assorted fat quarters of dark colors, four of medium colors, eight of medium tan and six of light tan. As you can see, some of the stars and the weaving strips are the same colors though out the quilt. For a planned scrap quilt like this one that has twenty blocks, you would plan how many pieces to cut from each color and maybe have five sets of blocks made up of four similar colored blocks each.
This takes some planning with pen and paper and a design wall in the beginning, but the finished product is a harmonious, colorful work of art!
So, now you know my two types of scrap quilts. Whether they are planned or unplanned, scrap quilts are a lot of fun to make.
If you care to, I would love to hear what your experiences are with scrap quilts. Do you like them?
Happy Quilting!
