Wish Upon a Quilt Blog

My scrap pile is overunning my sewing room.

Gather up your fabric scraps. Come up with a plan to make the mountain go away and start to sort according to your plan. Your plan could be to strip it all into 2.5 inch strips, 4.5 inch strips, and 5 inch charm squares. Or you can decide you will never make a scrap quilt in your life and pass the scraps on to a friend who will.

Or maybe you might want to grab some wash away stabilizer and start making your own special fabric for a cool bag or scarf. Tacky Living has a good description of the fun process. Just use more fabric instead of the specialty thread, unless of course you have those too. The great thing is that even odd angled shapes would look cool – you know the weird edges from cutting out a purse, dress. or applique pattern. Or the pieces from evening off a strip. Just slice and dice if the pieces are too big. (Ok, who else clicked on the duct tape dress form link on Tacky Living’s page? That is way to cool … now to find a friend who could be the wrapper or a friend willing to be a wrappee…) Oh wait- we were talking scraps weren’t we. Hey- why not stuff the dress form with those scraps! Oh I am on a roll now. I’ll have my space cleaned in no time!

If your scrap pile is too big to tackle in 15 minutes (Guilty!) make a plan to address it over the next few days in small increments.

I like 5 inch charm squares and 2.5 inch strips because there are a lot of patterns out there for those cuts and I can cut them on the Go. My current favorite pattern books for scraps are Loose Change and Layer Cake, Jelly Roll, and Charm Quilts.

Save some treasured scraps for a fun scrappy pin cushion.

If you weighed all your scraps, how much do you think it would weigh? How many years do you think the pile spans?

Precuts are getting more and more attention as those pretty Jelly Rolls, Layer Cakes, Charm Packs, Sweet Boxes and Honeybuns catch our eyes. Wish recently received new orders of Bali Pops, Neptune, and Fresh pre-cuts. Most quilters recognize the convenience of the pre-cuts but some wonder what to do with them. So we are all searching for the great patterns that are labeled for those beautiful Jelly Rolls, Charm Packs, and Layer Cakes. Moda has  several “cheat sheets” that can show you some common ways to cut Layer Cakes and Charm Packs. They also are very good about offering free quilt patterns for their various fabric lines. Don’t feel like you have to be limited to that fabric line. There is nothing to say that you can’t use a different line.

Moda’s Basic Measurements sheet gives estimates on the size of quilt based on the number of Layer Cakes, Jelly Rolls, or Charm packs.

Loose Change by Claudia Plett and Lee Ann Weaver has some great patterns that are adapted to Charm Packs (referred to as nickels in the book), Layer Cakes (referred to as dimes), and Fat Quarters. Some can be completed with Jelly Rolls too. It’s a fun book. More Nickel Quilts by Pat Speth has twenty patterns for quilts made with Charm Packs.

Today, I’ve been playing with the Neptune and Fresh fabric lines in EQ6. Moda is very good about providing down loadable image files that can be imported into EQ5 and EQ6. You can find their latest swatch samples here. I like to play with new fabric lines in EQ because it helps me get a better feel for the different values and texures in the line.

I tried to pick blocks that would be pre-cut freindly. Here’s a selection of some patterns I explored.

Moda has also provided a braided easter basket project sheet. The sample is done in Swank and stitched by hand. I’m thinking you could acheive a similiar look by machine using the Bali Bowl pattern. This would be a great project for the sweet Honeybuns Cathy has in the shop now. Check out Moda’s Bakeshop for more cool projects with pre-cuts.

 So do you EQ? and what are your favorite precut friendly patterns/projects?