Scraps make scrap quilts. Traditionally, a real scrap quilt is where the maker just grabs any fabric and sews it together without paying attention to color or design. A part of a dog, a solid, a green plant, bits of lighthouse…. when nobody is looking at any design or color and you end with a totally utilitarian quilt. A true scrap quilt is fiber. Great for the dog, for warmth, easy to sew….there are tons of reasons to appreciate this quilt. Making a "pretty" quilt was not the goal, just making a quilt itself was enough and there is nothing wrong with that. Actually, such a quilt can become pretty for other reasons: the gift it makes, the intentions of the maker, the comfort given to the maker, the age/capacity of the maker etc etc. Or the place in history where it was during a historic event. I am one of those who will never say that ANY quilt is ugly. Some quilts don't appeal to me, for sure, but that doesn't make the quilt ugly. I simply don't see or don't know enough about it to call it beautiful at hello. I'm a firm believer that every quilt has a reason to be called pretty, just because every quilt had hands that made it. They are that much work.
A next step up is sewing all these complete random scraps together but somehow create a design with it later. Usually, this means the scraps are cut into blocks and bordered with a black or white border to create some contrast. This too can create fun quilts for which there is room. Often charity quilts are done this way, because they are a low cost solution. Low cost in purchasing maybe, not low cost in time/making!
If you don't organize your shelves you can make scrap quilts, but if you do organize your fabric you can make "planned scrappy" quilts. Here, a world of possibilities goes open and there are many, many, accomplished quilters that have written excellent books and patterns to help you make good use of your scraps. All this with the desire to use it, to finish it. Maybe that sets me apart from the general view: I have no desire to finish it. Not at all. I love my scraps and I want to have them all. Sometimes, I'm even a little sad when the last piece of a favorite fabric is getting used. I pet this last piece and thank it for its service! Scraps make an essential part of my floating source of materials I can select from when I make a quilt. I love going with my hands through them, picking them up and wondering if I shall use them. Some I love more than others, some can even be too good for a certain spot in a quilt. Can't waste my scraps!
My scraps are paid for, there is no rush to do anything with it, period. They may lay in my room. Unused, or better, not yet used fabric, makes me happy to look at. I feel happy in my sewing room, they are my decor and I play with them daily. My scraps are just as dear as my bigger and newer cuts. For every new quilt my scraps are all in a way new because I look with new plans in my head. No, that silly cat print I can't use, but wait a minute... her body has the perfect shade of orange for my collage.... What if I cut this part of the cat out? A belly has turned into an orange piece and in the quilt nobody can see that it was part of a cat. But I know and it makes me smile!
Planned scrappy quilts have some kind of planning. This can be very minor planning like "using all pieces with blue" or "only novelty fabrics" or a much more intense planning. Sorting scraps by value for instance where any color will work as long as it is light (I'm sharing below an instagram post from colorfulartgirl. She did such an excellent job). Sorting fabrics that are one color or 2 color prints. Your hands go through all these fabrics in your bins at home but the thought process is just exactly the same as if you would be in a shop. You select fabrics and put them together with others. Most planned scrappy quilts could be made with new fabrics. The difference is just that you get more variety and you don't have to buy so much new fabric. It's "upcycling" at its very best!
I have shared with you on
Facebook already the Jen Kingwell quilt I am making right now by hand. It's my travel quilt project (see below). This quilt will be completely made out of scraps. It is a planned scrappy quilt as all the fabrics have to be in the same kind of navy and medium brown. I could have made the quilt in just a few fabrics, actually this pattern is so fantastic, it can be made up in many different styles. But I love the character the many different pieces bring to the quilt, that history of the fabric brings an extra level of coziness to this quilt, that is meant to be used in a living room. In selecting my scraps, I don't care about the design of the fabric, but am very strict about the color. Reproduction fabric next to modern pieces, old next to new. There is somewhere a snowman, a print with books.. little cute surprises that add some whimsy to the quilt. When you look at the quilt closely, you may sometimes think how can these 2 designs get put together? But in the total picture, it works, because when the blocks are put together in a layout, then I do pay attention to the colors and designs of each block to create a contrast with its neighbors. It's about the function of the color in the total. When you don't like a fabric in your scrap bin, cut it smaller.....in the end it is all about color...
Then there are quilts that require a lot of variety in fabric. They simply can't be made with a few fabrics. The scraps rise to another level in these quilts. Detailed applique quilts that need variety in pinks and greens for flowers and leaves, one color quilts, collage quilts. If I had unlimited funds I would not even be able to buy all the variety I want for my bigger collage quilt. Such a collage has hundreds of different pieces in them (when my next quilt is finished I'm going to spend some time counting the number of fabrics in it!), going in size from .5" to 4", but most are between 1-2". If you need 1" or 2", a fat quarter is huge! No shop really has all I want to have at one point. I need to collect! That's the main point: you can't buy the variety scraps can give you. You can buy fat quarters, you can buy charm packages, but often that still doesn’t give you variety and you can't pick and choose each individual piece of fabric. Every charm package has some you like and can use and some that are not working for a particular project.
To me my scraps make my pile of gold! They provide me different colors, different hues and there is not a single piece of fabric I toss out. I save them all and they have made my day so often. Yes, even the tiniest pieces. I toss them in a bowl and when I have a full bowl, I iron them on Lite Steam a Seam 2. They make a next collage easier! And yes, that means I have more bins with pieces that have already fusible on them ....
Now that I'm teaching again collage classes to guilds, I can see the value of a stash even more. There are quilters who have hardly any stash and for them I need to make kits with lots of fabric pieces in order to even take the class. Most quilters have a rather unbalanced stash. They are missing colors, because they normally don't work with certain colors. Or they have many scraps in the same design style. For them I'm finding myself making packages of color ranges: 25 pieces in each..love doing this....I'm back to selling fabric?? Then there are quilters who have such a good stash, it makes me eager to see the quilts they made!
Your stash is indeed a mirror of your quilting personality! And maybe even more: one of my students this week said that collage quilting is not for the "indecisive" as there is so much freedom in selecting fabrics, cutting sizes etc. She has a point. I will not be the one telling you what you have to do, but will encourage you to trust your own voice by giving you new ways and hints to look at fabric. Isn't that one of the beautiful things quilting is about?
