Stitchin' Therapy: Scrap Quilts

I love scrap quilts and enjoy finding easy patterns to use up the bits and pieces that I have left from my "planned quilts. Some patterns I do over and over and every one comes out different. The first photo is a Shaded Coins. It was the first quilt I made to donate to Habitat for Humanity. And it is one of my favorites.

When my husband's mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I made Loving Thoughts for her. She was an artist and loved color. Sadly she only used it for about 6 months. It now hangs in my living room.

This is a disappearing 9 patch pattern, called Where's your bone. Yep, made for one of the grand-puppies! Lucy refuses to lay down unless she is on one of my quilts. Got to love that gal.

Scrappy Mountains is a recent scrap quilt. The pattern is delectable mountains. I started it at Christmas while staying in a cabin with the family. The fabrics were mainly large pieces of fabric given to me when a friend of Deana's cleaned out her stash. I enjoyed this one so much, that I plan to make another one in my favorite floral fabrics.

Waste Not is truly a scrap quilt. The pattern is a split 9 patch and used up a lot of 3 1/2" squares that i had accumulated. I concentrated on the placement of the dark fabrics to get the strong effect. This was just donated to Habitat for Humanity.

Rails to Wilmington was this first donation quilt I made. It went to Matt in Wilmington, NC. Russ spent a week with a mission team from church rehabbing his house for Matt's youth ministry. When I saw the photos of the finished house, I knew it needed a quilt.

Starry Night is a small lap quilt. Lots of 4 inch squares and bright yellow stars. It was only after assembling the first 6 rows that I realized I left off a star! So instead of un-sewing I finished it as is.

Priceless Gems is a scrap jewel box pattern. All the jewel fabrics seem to sparkle like gems across the black background. It is 55" by 70". When I gave it to Jen, she commented that it looked like an artist palette. I knew I gave this to the right person then, because she got it!

Higher Hope is a scrappy braid quilt done in a colorwash. The colorful bands of the braid float across the black background.

Life Events was made for Barry and Amanda.
Pattern is a star struck variation called Tropical Twist by Bonnie Hunter. My variation uses 2 1/2" strips, and includes lots of scraps of every type. The pinwheels in the border are the "bonus" triangles created when making the block.

Faceted Jewels is a string quilt sewn onto foundation muslin. Each large square has a diagonal black strip dividing the 2 color families in that block. I created a "road map" planning sheet to use as a guide for color placement. This one is lots of fun to work on and can be as large or small as you like.

Summer of Love is bright and bold. The pattern is florabunda from Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville. I used up a lot of floral fabrics for the blocks of this modified Jacob's ladder pattern.

A duo of charms......the mini has raw edge stitched squares with a bit of applique. I asked the "what if" question and pieced the brick size charms into a wall hanging. Off setting the layout and staggering the applique created a whole new design.....Charming Bricks.

Mid-Winter Dreams is another string quilt project. All floral fabrics were used to make half of each block dark and half medium or light. I pieced this during our winter snow storm....hence the name.