Over my Christmas break, I had the flu. I wasn’t feeling well enough to do much of anything, but I did wander up to the studio towards the end of the week. I had a pile of scraps sitting by my sewing table and decided to stitch them together and see what happened.

Image shows a collection of brightly colored strips of fabric in blues, greens, yellow and maroon next to some odd shaped pieces of black fabric.

These scraps were left over from the bed quilt I am making for Walt and I. I have talked about the process in a couple of posts, here and here. They were just little skinny pieces and I wasn’t sure whether to keep them in my scrap boxes or get rid of them.

I decided I wanted to use a variety of colors in each little section of the quilt, so I sorted the small strips by color and then selected one from each color. While I was sewing the pieces together, I tried to be somewhat random about the order of the colors.

I alternated a black scrap with a color until I sewed enough pieces together that I could cut a 4 inch square out of each section.

Sometimes my ruler was at a fairly wonky angle to make it fit. But I worked until I had a dozen squares made. I laid them out in an alternating pattern, with the “stripes” going up and down then side to side. A fairly narrow border framed the blocks.

Quilting the scraps quilt

I chose a multicolored thread to quilt the small quilt with. These types of threads can add another layer of interest to a quilt. This spool I had fit the colors of the quilt well. I chose a meandering line, basically a scribble, to quilt the project. I then bound the quilt with the same fabric I had used for the border.

The quilt measures sixteen inches by thirteen inches. It was a fun little project that didn’t take too much energy when I wasn’t feeling well. Hopefully you enjoyed this little trip to the scraps pile with me.