Scrumptious Scraps Quilt-Along - Change for a Jelly Roll!

Hi, all!

Welcome back, to the final Sunday for the Scrumptious Scraps Quilt-Along!  From the comments and emails I've been getting from you all, this year's quilts have been a big success - many of you have made your own versions or been inspired to add them to your own bucket lists.  I love to hear that!  Our final guest post is this week, from my good friend Emily of Em's Scrap Bag. If you haven't seen her blog before, you are missing a world of wonderful scrappy quilting advice and inspiration!  And she makes the most beautiful artisan soaps - their names sound good enough to eat!  And best of all, she is the brains, hands, and heart behind Quilty Hugs for Happy Chemo, one of this year's charities for Hands2Help.  So now, from the multi-talented Emily, comes her tutorial for Change for a Jelly Roll.  And remember, hang around until the end, when I'll announce the winner of last week's giveaway and you can leave a comment for this week's scrappy giveaway!

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I love this time of year and Sarah's Hands 2 Help. I am so thankful for her and you, who read her blog. Your generosity never ceases to amaze me as boxes upon boxes of quilts arrive at my home full of love for those fighting cancer. I could in no way help so many if it were not for this outpouring of quilts. So it is with great pleasure I present this scrap friendly tutorial.

My strip bin could barely be contained so I chose to design a coin quilt.  I call it Change for a Jelly Roll.  If you click on the pictures it will enlarge them so you can better see the measurements. For this quilt you will need 2 1/2 yards background, leftover bits of jellyroll strips to equal about 620", and a bunch of random strips. (precise I know!)

From your background fabric cut:

Nine 3.5" x width of fabric strips. Sew these end to end and sub cut into six 3.5" x 60.5" strips.

Three 11.5" x width of fabric strips. Sub cut these into two 4.5" x 11.5" rectangles, four 5.5" x 11.5" rectangles, and twenty 3.5" x 11.5" rectangles.

Sew your jellyroll pieces end to end along the 2.5" side until you have a strip at least 605 inches long. Sub cut this into ten 60.5" strips.

Sew your random strips (any width) into strata that measure 12" wide.

Make as many of these as you need to create six 6.5" x 11.5" strata units, nine 4.5" x 11.5" strata units, four 3.5" x 11.5" strata units and four 2.5" x 11.5" strata units.

Following the diagram below, sew strata units between background units make two of these rows. (Row type A)

 Following the diagram below, sew strata units between background units make one of these rows. (Row type B)

 Sew 5 of the jellyroll strip units together. Make two of these.

 Sew the strata row type B between your jellyroll rows.  Then sew one row type A  to the top and the other to the bottom.

And there you have it - a quick, cheerful quilt that hopefully made a dent in your scrap bin!

Thank you Sarah for allowing me to contribute. Thank you in advance to everyone who donates a quilt to Quilty Hugs. They are truly appreciated.

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Thanks for the great inspiration AND tutorial, Emily!  Wow wow wow!  Are you all as excited by this pattern as I am?  I don't know about you, but my string bucket is running over, and this looks like it could be just the thing to put a BIG dent in it!  

And now for the winner of last week's scrap package giveaway...

Congratulations, Shirley!  I'll be contacting you by email to get your snail mail address!

And now, one final scrap package giveaway to end our Scrumptious Scraps Quilt-Along!  Just leave a comment below with some bloggy love for Emily and her tutorial, and let me know if you want to be included in the giveaway.  Be sure to leave your email address  so I can reach you if you win!  I've responded to all the comments left so far, so if you haven't received a response so far it's a good bet you're a no-replyblogger!

And here's an important reminder - next Sunday this year's Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge begins!  Be sure to drop by - and hopefully sign up to participate - because there will be a giveaway (not scraps this time!) for one of our early participants!

Hugs!

Sarah

Scrumptious Scraps Quilt-Along - The Ever-Faithful 4-Patch!

Hi, all!

It's that time again - time for another great scrap quilt tutorial, simple and quick enough for charity quilts.  After all, the idea is to inspire you to make quilts for this year's Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge, right?  I hop you're been enjoying the quilts we've shared so far - today's is one of my favorites, and a great scrap buster!  Enjoy the tutorial, and be sure to hang on until the end, when I'll announce the winner of last week's scrappy giveaway - and since I still have an over-abundance of scraps, there'll be another change at a package of scraps this week!

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Thankfully, we were blessed with some beautiful sunny days after I finished this quilt, and I got some good pictures.  This simple quilt is a variation on a four-patch design, and works up quickly and easily!

This was the inspiration shot I started from (no way to attribute it, as it goes to an unconnected link. If it's yours, I'm sorry!)  As I was making my version, I fully intended to run my background strips horizontally, but when it was finished, I found that I preferred them running vertically.  The advantage of a square quilt?  You can change your mind!  So here's how I made it...

The first thing I needed was four-patch blocks.  These are each made using two different fabrics, although I suppose you could use four different fabrics if you preferred.  My friend Lisa helped me out and made the four-patch blocks for me, using some of the over-abundance of 3.5" squares we had on hand at church.  I sorted out 80 four-patch blocks in mostly bright colors for this quilt.

These blocks measured 6.5" unfinished, so I cut 2" x 6.5" strips in one of my favorite grays to act as sashing between them.  I chose to have my sashing strips finish out at 1.5" wide because I felt that width would look good in proportion to the 3" finished squares in the four-patch blocks.

 Isn't chain piecing wonderful?  A stack of sashing strips and a stack of four-patch blocks and an hour, and you've got the building blocks for your quilt top!  I sewed one sashing strip to the right side of each four-patch block, then pressed the seam towards the sashing strip.

Once all the building blocks were complete and pressed, it was time to lay it out on the design wall.  By the way, if you don't have a design wall, I highly recommend the Fons & Porter design wall.  Basically a plastic backed piece of flannel-like material with grommets at the top, it hangs on Command Hooks that I mounted on a wood piece that sits on top of my fabric storage shelves.  When I need it, I hang it up in front of the shelves, when I don't, it folds up and sits in a drawer!  

The picture above was one of many layouts I fiddled around with.  I'm not very good at discerning color values (light to dark) with multiple colors, but I've discovered that my phone has a great tool to help with the process - the "mono" filter will transfer the picture to black and white, and then it's easy to see which blocks read darker or lighter!

 

You can see just how much easier it is to see in this picture.  The light blocks are easily distinguishable from the dark blocks, and can be moved around as needed.

And once again, here's the finished layout.  I chose to organize my colors on the diagonal, putting the darkest blocks in the lower left and the lightest ones in the upper right, to establish movement across the quilt.  I love the way it draws the eye across the quilt!

Someone last week commented that she hated to hear "quilt as desired" so I'll show you how I quilted mine - a random meander that is quick and easy on my long arm machine.  But it would be equally interesting with a straight line stitch on either side of the background sashing where they meet with the block above, and on either side of each row.  Or if you feel really inspired, I think it would look great with straight line stitching in the same direction as the sashing strips, about 1/4" apart across the whole quilt.  It gives a quilt like this such texture!

I was lucky enough to have a stash of single-sized top sheets in my stash - my grandkids don't like sleeping under a sheet, so my daughter gave me the other half of their sheet sets - and I had one that worked perfectly with the front of this quilt to back it with.

And here's another picture, just because it's pretty!!  It really is a simple quilt to make, and can easily be adjusted to fit whatever size squares you may already have cut.  Here's how to do just that...

First of all, find out what you have on hand.  For my quilt, I had access to an abundance of  3.5" cut squares, so that's what I used. I needed 320 of them, 160 pairs, to make the 80 blocks I needed for this quilt.  To figure out how many blocks I needed, I used the formula for quilt math from this post.  I wanted my quilt to be around 60" square, and these blocks measured 6" x 7.5" finished, which meant I needed 8 columns across and 10 rows down.  You may find you have more 2.5" squares, 2" squares, or 5" squares on hand that you want to use, so just adjust the directions to get the size quilt you want.  

Now, for your sashing.  First of all, be sure that you measure your four-patch blocks to see how long to make your sashing pieces.  You'll be happier with the finished quilt if you have all the same size sashing pieces, instead of sewing the four-patch blocks to a long strip of sashing and trimming it off.  One piece of sashing for each four-patch block.  For my quilt, I needed 3/4 of a yard for the sashing, which I cut 2" x 6.5".  You may want to fiddle with different widths of sashing if you change the four-patch block size, finding the perfect width sashing for your block.  I usually try to make my sashing half the width of one finished square in the four-patch, but not to the point of weird fractions!  Just lay it out and see what looks good.  

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And now for the winner of last week's scrap bundle...

Congratulations, Joan!  I'll be emailing you for your snail mail address so I can get that package out to you this week!

And I have another package to give away this week!  Leave a comment below to be in the drawing (if you aren't interested in scraps, leave a comment anyway and just say so - comments make me happy!)  I'll announce another winner next Sunday!

Hugs!

Sarah

Scrumptious Scraps Quilt-Along - Stacked Coins!

Hi, all!

Are you ready for another great scrap quilt idea?  I'm excited to introduce you to Kristi, who you may also know as @kristiquilts on Instagram.  She creates marvelous scrap quilts all.the.time and when I started looking for help with this series of tutorials, she was one of the first people I knew I had to ask.  I was so excited when she agreed to help out, and I'm even more so now that I've seen what she has for us today.  So let's get this show on the road - and don't quit before the end, as we'll have a winner from last week's giveaway and another scrappy giveaway, too!

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Thank you Sarah for hosting the Hand2Help Challenge. I am very pleased to be able to share this quilting tutorial with you today!

I love making use of all my scraps, but like all quilters I am always looking for great ways to keep them tamed! After exploring the myriad of ideas for ‘scrap-organizing,’ I decided on a simple system for myself. For me, anything ⅛ of a yard or more I keep folded neatly in my fabric drawers for a variety of projects. Anything smaller than that I cut into 2 ½ inch strips. Whatever remains from those strips (that is bigger than ½ inch) becomes a string or a crumb. I store my scraps by color in small fabric bins with plastic bags to sort the 2 ½ inch strips, strings, and crumbs.

When my bin starts to look full (like the green and orange ones  in the photo), I start cutting up the 2 ½ inch strips for a scrap quilt. I’m always on the lookout for simple patterns that use 2 ½ strips, so when my bin is full, I can get a project ready to go quickly!

Inspiration for the Stacked Coin Quilt

I had been collecting ideas for coin quilts for a few months. There are many ways to make this type of quilt—from straight stacked coins, to offset coins, to random size coins with crazy offsets that look like they are about to topple. I knew I wanted to make my coins uniform (to use the 2 ½ inch scraps) and to make the offset uniform to simplify the construction. Thank you to all the Stacked Coin Quilt makers that came before me!

Planning

For this quilt I used my green and orange 2 ½ inch strips. All values in either of these colors from the lights to the darks went into this quilt.

The unifying aspect of this quilt is the neutral background color. Choosing one fabric to use as a background gives the variety of scraps in this quilt cohesion so the scraps can sing without being wild. For the stacked coin design, I would choose a fabric that is either a solid or a simple all-over print. I would steer away from fabrics that are obviously directional. Directional fabrics require more thought in placement, and could be too busy with the variety of scraps in the quilt.

I auditioned a few grays from my stash to use as the background (see photo). Any of these could have worked, but I decided to go with the gray fabric on the right for its medium value. (Actually, I had just enough of that fabric for the center of the quilt, and had to make-do with the darker gray fabric on the left for the border.)

As for the binding, you could use additional background fabric, or go scrappy with lots of binding leftovers in various shades of green and orange.

Yardage Requirements

Quilt Size: 54 by 69 ½ inches

Unit of two coins: 4 by 6 finished or 4 ½ by 6 ½ unfinished

Background and Vertical Sashing: 2 ¾ yards

Border: ¾ yard

Colored Fabric Scraps: about 2 yards worth, or about 1000 inches of 2 ½ inch strip scraps, or 96 (5 by 5) charm squares

Binding: 5/8 to ¾ yard depending on your preferred size

Cutting

Background: 

• 192 rectangles 2 by 2 ½ inches (for coin units)
• 8 strips 3 inches by Width of Fabric (WOF) (for sashing)

Border:

• 7 strips 3 inches by WOF

Coins—Colored (green and orange) scraps:

192 rectangles 2 ½ by 5 inches (for coins) 

• Yardage: Cut into 2 ½ inch strips by WIF. Then cut those strips into 192 2 ½ by 5 inch rectangles.
• Scraps: iron and cut 2 ½ inch strips of at least 5 inches long. Then cut those pieces into 192 2 ½ by 5 inch rectangles.
• Charm Squares: Cut each in half once to make two  2 ½ by 5 inch rectangles which will yield 192 2 ½ by 5 inch rectangles.

When I cut lots of one type of piece, I like to clip them in sets of 10 with little binding clips.

Binding:

• Cut into strips for your preferred binding size

Sewing

Making Coins

Sew a small background rectangle onto one end of each colored rectangle. Press to one side or open. I pressed mine towards the background.

Joining the coins into pairs

Now sew the coins together in pairs. This task, although not difficult, is critical to making the staggered stack of coins. Let me explain this part in detail to help you avoid an orientation pitfall.

When you sew the pairs together, you want the top coin to be on the left side and the bottom coin to be on the right as shown in the next photo:

To sew, fold the top coin down onto the bottom coin, pin, and sew.

When it’s done, it looks like this! 

Now watch what you can do with this unit: if you rotate it around so that the bottom coin is now on the top...look! The new top coin is still on the left! No matter which orientation you choose, the top coin will always be to the left.

Take a moment to lay one two-coin unit above a second two coin unit and they will look like the next photo. Awesome!

After you’ve sewn all your pairs together, take a moment to stack them up and make sure that all the top coins in the pairs are on the left. If you find any stray units that have the top coin on the right, as shown next, it’s time to get out your seam ripper and fix it so the top coin is to the left.

The problem is that if any of the units have coins going to the wrong side, when you try to line them up, you’ll end up with mismatched coins. Oops!!

Joining the Pairs into 4’s and then into 8’s

Once you have the pairs together correctly, the rest goes together much easier because you can’t mess up the orientation by rotating the units. So feel free to rotate the units to make pleasing combinations. Join each pair into 4’s and then join the 4’s into 8’s. Up until this point, I did all these combinations of colors randomly, by picking up one piece and then picking up another piece without much deliberation.

Sewing the Columns

Now that you have 8’s, it’s time to arrange them on your design wall (bed, floor, table) to find a placement of the colors that you are happy with. There are six columns each with four sets of 8’s. 

Once you have the arrangement you like, sew the four sets of 8’s into columns.

Adding Vertical Sashing

To add the sashing, seam the strips of background fabric and then cut pieces to the correct length. First measure each of the columns of coins and average the measurements (or pick the measurement that is in the middle of the grouping). Write this number down. Now sew background sashing strips together and cut so that you end up with five long pieces that are the length that you wrote down. If you sewed a perfect ¼ inch seam then these pieces will be 64 ½ inches long! 😊

Sew a long piece on the right side of the first five columns of coins. To do this, I fold the long piece into halves, and then into quarters. I mark the ends, ¼, ½, ¾ points on the border. I do the same for the column of coins. Then pin the border to the column of coins at the corresponding points. Sew from the top of the quilt to the bottom. Press toward the sashing.

Now attach the coin columns together. Change the direction of your seamline by sewing from bottom to top this time.

Adding Borders

For the two vertical side borders, seam border strips together and cut two long pieces that are the same measurement as the vertical sashing. Sew from top to bottom to attach the side borders. Press toward the outside borders.

For the top and bottom borders, measure the width of the quilt at the center. Seam together strips and cut them so that you end up with two long pieces that are the center width of the quilt. If you sewed a perfect ¼ inch seam then these pieces will be 54 inches long! 😊 Pin (at the ends, ¼, ½, ¾) and sew the strips onto the top and bottom. Press toward the outside borders.

Finishing

Now you have a completed stacked coins top! Add some fun quilting and your favorite binding and you’ll have a finished quilt!

   

Happy Sewing!

Kristi

Kristi, a fourth-generation quilter, has been quilting actively since 2013. She loves sewing quilts for kids and using up all her scraps! When not working as a Database Administrator during the day or sewing in her free time, she can be found enjoying the outdoors near her Northern California home with her husband of 30 years and their 11-year-old son. You can follow her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/kristiquilts/ 

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Isn't that a fabulous quilt?  And such a great scrap buster, too.  I can see many of these in my scrappy future!  Thank you, Kristi, for sharing your talents with us!  

And now, how about a winner for last week's giveaway?  I asked little Miss Random, and she said...

Congratulations, Kathy!  I'll be contacting you later today to get your snail mail address for a package of scraps!!

And because I've yet to make any kind of significant dent in my scraps, I'll happily give away another package this week!  Just leave a comment below (if you don't want any more scraps, just say so!) and I'll draw another name next week.  Be sure to leave Kristi some quilt-y love, too - she's not a blogger, but I'd sure like to show her how wonderful bloggers are!  If you're on Instagram, be sure to check out and maybe follow her feed - she always has beautiful eye candy to share!

Hugs!

Sarah

Scrumptious Scraps Quilt-Along - Creativity With What You Have!

Hi, all!

Are you ready for another installment in the Scrumptious Scraps Quilt-Along?  This week I'll be talking about using what you have, with some tips about how to figure out what you need to make a quilt, etc.  So let's get started!

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Here's a picture of the quilt I made for this week. Well, ok, it's just a flimsy, but I PROMISE I finished this quilt!  I didn't realize I had not taken pictures of the finished quilt until today, and it is a soggy mess in my yard right now, so no way to take nice pictures.  I do have proof that I quilted it, but I'll show you that later.

And here is the box that started it all.  For some unknown reason, I have a shoebox FULL of pieces cut 2.5" x 5.5".  This picture was taken after I made the quilt above, so you can get an idea of just how full it was.  I think there's enough left in the box to make at least two more quilts the same size!  So I decided to make a quilt using these pieces.  

Inspiration Shot!

This quilt was my inspiration shot - my starting point.  I didn't know the sizes of these pieces, but using a little (gasp) QUILT MATH, I could use my pieces to create something similar.  

And here's the quilt math:  My pieces measured 2.5" x 5.5", and paired up with a background fabric, one of each sewn together into a 2-patch block would measure 4.5" x 5.5", finishing out at 4" wide x 5" tall. I wanted my quilt to finish out at approximately 60" square, so how many of these 2-patch blocks did I need?  Divide 60" by 4", and you get 15, so I needed 15 blocks across.  Divide 60" by 5", and you get 12, so I needed 12 blocks down.  Multiply 15 x 12, and you get 180 of the 2-patch blocks to make this quilt.

First step is to pull 180 print pieces from my tub.  That was an interesting process, because there were many of these that had multiples, and I didn't want to load the quilt up with a lot of repeat pieces.  So I went through the stacks, pulling one of each print and adding them to my "quilt" stack.  When I got through the piles, I went back through doing the same thing until I had enough to make the quilt.  One tip here - most of my pieces were green-oriented, but I threw in a few other colors for "POP!" - some purple, pink, and graphic prints.  Those bits will provide a place for the eye to stop and perceive all of the quilt, instead of wandering over it aimlessly.

Then I laid these pieces out on my cutting board and auditioned background colors.  I tried a lot of different things - several different grays, cream, khaki - all the traditional neutral background colors.  Now, I love neutrals, but I think we tend to limit ourselves to the traditional.  Nothing really wowed me - until I stepped out of the box and pulled a vivid blue burlap-look print left over from a long-ago quilt project.  But did I have enough?

Say hello to my little friend!  This is one reason my phone is never very far away when I'm working on a quilt.  This little app by Robert Kaufman is absolutely the most useful thing on my phone.  (Search the app store for "quilting calculator" and you'll see it - and best of all, it's free!) It contains a great selection of calculators you need for quilting. This is the calculator I used to figure out how much fabric I needed...

As you can see, I entered the number and size of pieces I needed, and hit Calculate...

...and here are the results!  You get two different fabric requirements, based on the direction you cut your pieces.  Sometimes they are the same, most of the time they are slightly different.  Fortunately, I had enough of my deep blue fabric to make this quilt, so I got to work cutting, and then chain piecing my blocks.

Isn't chain piecing fun?  Those 180 sets went together pretty quickly, and soon I was pressing all the seams towards the background pieces.  

And how about another bonus?  I used a bunch of partially full bobbins to piece this quilt, and look - SEVEN empty bobbins all ready to be loaded up again!  It pays to remember there's all kinds of scraps to use up in your sewing area!

I arranged the blocks on my design wall, moving them around until I was satisfied with the layout.  Assembly began - I like to sew columns together rather than rows but that's just personal preference.  However you like to do it is the best way for you!

And here's the proof that I actually did quilt it!  I really wish I had taken some pictures when the weather was so beautiful yesterday - it turned out wonderful - bright and warm and cuddly!

So now, how do you make your own?  Well, if you are fortunate enough to have some rectangular cut pieces already, you're set!  I've given you the math to figure out how many pieces you need and how to figure out how much background you need.  Don't have any rectangles in your stash?  Don't fret!  There's still hope!

Do you have charm (5") squares?  Remember those random charm packs you bought without a plan?  Can they play well together?  Then cut them in half and get started!  Or how about leftover jelly roll strips, or leftover binding strips?  I even have a precut bundle hanging around in my stash - I think they used to call it a dessert roll - that is an odd size but might be perfect for this project.  Think creatively about what you've got and use. it. up!

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Do you feel inspired?  I hope so!  There's so much potential laying around our studios, just waiting to become quilts.  And don't laugh when you read studio and think about your own sewing space - any place you sew is a studio, where you create using your God-given artistic talents!  So be proud of your space AND your creativity!

And I promised a box of scraps to one of you last week - let's see who the lucky recipient is...

Congratulations!  I'll be contacting Liz to get her snail mail address so I can send her out a package of scraps to play with!

And since mailing out two packages of scraps hasn't made a dent in my scrap stash, I'm going to offer up another one this week!  I'll choose from the people who leave a comment below - if you DON'T want scraps, be sure to say so, and if you DO, be sure to leave your email address!

Happy Scrappy Sewing!!

Sarah