A while back I was with quilting buddies in Holdrege and there was a garage sale at the senior citizen’s center. I spied a beat-up brown grocery sack with “50¢” scrawled on the side.
The sack was full of old fabric scraps, and a quick look told me they were mostly small pieces. But for a price like that, I wasn’t about to leave them behind.
I taught a class in Shenandoah, Iowa last week, and my hostess treated me to the progress on her guild challenge quilt. It’s remarkable so I wanted to share it with you. She started by drawing these four fabrics randomly, and at first glance, you might think that was disheartening.
Carolyn began with these four seemingly unrelated fabrics.
But Carolyn is nothing if not an adventurer, and she soon found the common element. What do you think it was?
My friends, the commonality among the fabrics was orange.
And with that, Carolyn went to town.
She made a medallion for the quilt’s center, repeating the fabrics several times to create cohesion.
She made Pinwheels and framed them with triangle-squares.
She added a little of this and a little of that, continuing to repeat the oranges and adding in some deep chocolate brown.
Can you imagine how exciting it was to sew this? It’s the kind of quilt where you make decisions as you go. You don’t worry about the end result while you’re doing it. You just make one decision at a time. The quilt pulls you along.
This is how the quilt looked when I visited at the beginning of April, but she’s not finished yet. More blocks will be added to the top and bottom, but knowing Carolyn, that plan could still change.
It was great fun to hear about her process and to see how well this project is shaping up. I love it. I don’t know if I could have made those four fabrics work this well!
I always pull out Everybunny this time of year—it’s one of my favorite finishes. There was a lot to learn about scrap quilts when I made it. Let’s pull some lessons from it. Today will be #1 and I’ll do a little series on making better scrap quilts.
Everybunny, designed and made by Diane Harris for Quiltmaker March/April ’16
St. Patrick’s Day is nearly upon us, and that put me in the mood to sew something green last week. This is a free quilt pattern for a four-leaf clover design I named Lucky.
Around Christmas last year, I started piecing a simple chevron quilt made from triangle-squares. I sewed from my stash and was pretty excited with how it started coming together.
My trunk show “One Hundred Small Quilts” is popular with quilt groups. I’ve been giving it for six years and have added to the collection. I actually bring about 120 quilts with me. The quilts have lessons to teach us. This is Dresden Delight.
Dresden Delight by Diane Harris. Photo by Mellisa Karlin Mahoney. Used with permission.
Whenever I finish a quilt, I put the leftover binding into a shoebox in my closet. When I’m ready to bind a scrap quilt, I start by checking in the shoebox. Last weekend I wanted to bind my scrappy green and teal Patchwork Forest quilt, which I’ve named Can’t See the Forest for the Trees.
Can’t See the Forest for the Trees by Diane Harris
I finished piecing my row quilt from Quiltmaker’s Bitty Blocks this week. We offered these small blocks as freebies when I was working for QM, and even though I made lots of blocks at that time, I had never finished my quilt. 
When I pulled out this UFO to try again, I had stars, baskets, bow ties, hearts and houses. I made the triangle-squares at the bottom, above, as a quickie row to take up space and to warm up a little.
My friend Paula Stoddard made the quilt that QM published as Little Bitty Love in a newsstand-only special called Quiltmaker’s Row Quilts. I love her version, but I wanted to make it my own so I decided some creativity was in order.
I made a bunch of Flying Geese, a checkerboard, Housetops (third row from the bottom), and bricks (fourth row from the bottom).
I thought I had a pretty good handle on things, so I began sewing rows together. But when I looked again, everything felt very congested near the bottom. There wasn’t room to breathe. So much checkerboard going on and on and on. And the bottom row of Housetops just didn’t feel right.
This is often the price you pay for veering off in your own direction. It’s always easier and quicker to make your quilt look just like the one in the pattern, but for me, it’s more satisfying to add my own twist. That’s why I do it, in spite of the extra headaches.
In order to give it room to breathe, I wanted more background, so I made some improvisational trees using Amy Smart’s tutorial at Diary of a Quilter. I cut my patches 5″ x 6″ but pared them down a lot in the end. They’re the only wonky row in the quilt, and I worried that they’d look out of place, but I think they’re okay in the end.
As I stood back and looked again (always stand way back, across the room), something else was bothering me. I realized that the pinwheels would look a lot better below the trees than above them. More unsewing. Possibly bad words. Resewing. Good thing I was home alone!
I moved the trees up and I switched the triangle-squares with the row I call Dribble. Now Dribble is at the bottom. I also eliminated the Housetops—they seemed way too heavy for the quilt. Now we’re getting somewhere.
You can hardly see it here, but the horizontal aqua sashing is scrappy. I only had small pieces of aqua: fat quarters or less.
I wanted this to be stash sewing, so I found aqua prints that read about the same, pieced the length I needed and called it good. Some are brighter aqua prints but I used the back side—one of my favorite tricks!
For the side borders, I used up the leftover aqua strips. I think it looks fine.
I auditioned at least 10 fabrics for the final border. Nothing seemed to work. The idea is always to have something with interest that does not compete with the center. You don’t want to go to all that work in the middle only to have the border detract from it. I think this border works, and I had it in my stash!
Once it’s quilted, I may put a bright pink or red binding on it. It would be like an exclamation point!
This quilt goes into my trunk show, “Make Extraordinary Scrap Quilts.” It gets great reviews and I think your guild would enjoy it! Get in touch today.
To see what I’m working on from day to day, follow me on Instagram, where most of the magic happens: @stashbanditquilting
What’s not to love about Valentine’s Day? Just about everyone can get on board with loving and being loved. I designed an easy little heart quilt block and put it into a small quilt design just for the upcoming holiday. I’ve written the instructions and they’re a gift. This is “To You, with Love.”
You can make all the hearts in just one color, or you can make them scrappy. You can do a scrappy background, or use just one fabric. So many options! You can see them on my Instagram where I’m @stashbanditquilting.
I unearthed a corner of my studio last week and came across some treasures. Neatly stacked in a cardboard box were my QM Bitty Blocks from 2015. I and other QM staff members designed these little gems as freebies that we presented month by month on the Quiltmaker blog that year.
It was so much fun. I made blocks in about half of the months but as always, there were more ideas than hours in the day, so my sweet little piles were set aside without being finished into a quilt. Coming across them again was like rediscovering old friends and I think it’s time they became a quilt.