Scrap-A-Palooza! Quilt #7 Part One

Recently, I was reading a great post by Rachel over at Stitched in Color.  She was talking about that fabric that you have fallen out of love with.  She calls it unloved fabric - in my world, I refer to it as the Got2Go fabric.  No matter what you call it, it is time to accept that the love is no longer there and get to using it.

Rachel goes on to talk about ways to use this fabric and one option is to cut them in small bits and use them in patchwork as value-based.  Because then the fabric starts to be about the color and not about the print.  (The success to scrap quilts in my opinion.)

So I thought it would be fun to take this concept further this month and use our scraps as color and work through some of those "unloved" fabrics.

So my vision for this month's Scrap-A-Palooza quilt will be to use scraps and create a gradation quilt.

In the past, I have used my scraps in two different ways.  The first is to use busy prints and group them so they create a block of color.  I did this on my scrappy windowpane quilt.



















and the Geese Migration quilt (published recently in Quilty magazine).









The other method is to use fabric bits that read as solids (tone on tones) and gradate the color across a portion of the color wheel.  I am currently doing this on my Basket Weave star blocks.








A group I sew with recently did this on a donation quilt we made.  All from scraps - old, new,  modern, vintage, you name it, the prints are in there.

One of the things I found while cleaning out my sewing room was a bunch of thin strings I had cut for a project I have decided to abandon.  Many of the fabrics are batiks and most are really old prints.  I got out my graph paper and my colored pencils and sketched up a quick pattern where my plan is to gradate some blocks from green to blue to purple and stagger them in three columns across a quilt top.

My blocks are going to be quite big and my plan is to make a large lap quilt so I can burn through the huge supply of jeweled tone scraps I have accumilated.  Next week, I will share the measurements and how I make my blocks.  You may decide to make something a bit smaller or completely different.  The exercise is simply to start looking at your scraps as colors.

And you don't have top work in the cool colors.  Here is a little quilt I did as a class sample in yellows, reds and oranges.  For your project, just check your scraps and "unloved" fabrics and see what colors you have the most of.

For this quilt, we will also need a fairly large chunk of a background fabric.  I haven't decided on a final color yet but I did pull some of my larger solid pieces and will decide next week which one to use.

 

So how about it, are you ready to sew some scraps and build your color confidence?!?

I am keeping the homework simple this week.  Here is an overview:

• Dig through those scraps and determine your colorways.  We will be sewing with strings.
• Design up a pattern (or feel free to follow along with mine)
• Pull some possible background fabrics
• Most importantly, get creative and have fun!

Each month, I see more and more of you joining in.  I always love to share pictures and links to your projects. Feel free to grab the button in the sidebar to share with your readers so they know what you are up to.

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

Now let's get this month's party started!

Linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation,  Richard and Tanya Quilts, Fabric Frenzy Friday , Fresh Sewing Day and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  Hope to see you there!