Scrap-A-Palooza! Quilt #6 Part One

Before I get started on this month's Scrap-A-Palooza quilt, I wanted to mention again the Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop.  If you find yourself with a few spare minutes, you can spend them exploring some great new blogs.  You can get started by going to yesterday's post and following the links.

  I know I have found some new blogs filled with lots of fresh inspiration!

For some of you, this will be the first month you have seen the Scrap-A-Palooza series.  It is a bit different than many of the sew-alongs.  As I cannot see into your scrap bin and design something up for the scraps that are found in your sewing room, I will be walking through the process I am taking to sew up a quilt based on what scrappy goodness has inspired me.  I will be writing each post in such a way that should you desire, you can sew right along with me.  Or, you can just read along and once you see the quilt evolve, you will be able to go back later and use the posts as a

reference to make your own quilt.

What do you say let's just get started!

 

 

 

 As I shared in a previous posts about how I store my scraps, I like to keep scraps from the same line or designer segregated in a plastic bag rather than loose in a scrap bin.  I do this when there are lots of leftover scraps and I know I want to design a scrap quilt around them.  I decided to get out one of these bags for this month's quilt.

 

All of these fabrics come from the Cloud 9 collection celebrating the 10th anniversary of Mo Willem's book Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!  I am in the mood to play with silly fabrics this month!

 

 

 

 The first thing I did with the scraps was to get them organized into prints so I could get a clear idea what I had.  Some prints I only had a scrap or two while others I had some pretty good size chunks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also had some bits and pieces from some printed panels.  I wanted to come up with a design to try and work some of these into the quilt too.  This means my design will need some chunky pieces!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So my vision for this quilt is to make a simple patchwork brick quilt.
 

 

 

 

 

 My next step was to decide what size to cut the "bricks".  I liked the idea of keeping the pieces fairly large but I also had a limited amount of fabric so I needed to use as much of it as I could.  First, I collected up all the smaller pieces and took measurements.  In order to use these pieces, I felt like the "bricks" would be too small.  I determined there really wasn't going to be that much loss if I went with bigger pieces so these went into the big scrap bin.

 

 

 

 

Based on the prints in this line, I decided to go with rectangles cut at 4.5" x 7.5".  I knew I was also going to need some half bricks for the sides so from the smaller scraps, I cut pieces that are 4" x  4.5".

 

I also cut the panels into rectangles.  When it came to the border piece I had, rather than chop it up into pieces (and end up with a bunch of partial pigeons) I decided to cut some longer pieces to work into some of the rows of bricks.  If I had any orphan blocks in this line, I would have tried to work them in somewhere too.

Now, how about you?  Do you have a lot of something you want to sew up?  This can be a designer, fabric line, color or genre of fabric.  This is a simple design and there are a number of ways you can make this quilt your own.

 ***The possibilities are endless!***

So, the next question I know I am going to be asked is how much do I need to cut?  Well, it depends on how big you want your quilt and what size you want to cut your "bricks". If you have a quilt size you want to strive for, some quick calculations can give you an approximate number of pieces to cut. 

I hope some of you are inspired to take a look at your scraps and sew along this month.  It is a super easy quilt and it really uses up a lot of those larger scraps or those "gotta go" fabrics. Now off we go to finish cutting up our scraps. This is such an easy quilt, there will only be 3 posts this month.  But I will meet you back here in about a week and we will start laying out our quilts.

Here's an overview of the important stuff to do before the next step!

• Pull your scraps/stash. 
• Determine your "brick" size
• Cut your scraps to size.  Remember some half bricks will also be needed.
• Pull any orphan blocks or block components that might be worked into the quilt
• And most importantly, get creative and have fun!

Drop me a line if you are joining in so I can follow along on your progress.  I love to feature the projects of others - it is so fun to see what everyone comes up with.  Feel free to grab the button in the sidebar to share with your readers what you are up to.  

 

And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me.

 

Now let's Party!

I will be sharing this with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, Fresh Sewing Day at Lily's Quilts, and Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation.  Hope to see you there!