A scrappy quilt

One of the things that my father and I have in common is that, as a first step in developing new hobbies, we buy books and read them. However, the internet now gives me immediate access to more hobby-related knowledge than I can shake a stick at. I learned most of what I know about quilting from reading blogs and I taught myself to knit the other night by watching youtube videos.

One of the quilting blogs that I found early on was Quiltville.com. I was really struck by the idea that I'd paid as much per yard for my scraps as I had for the pieces I cut out of them. I'm also on a mega-kick to try to reduce my environmental impact, so the idea of NOT throwing those little pieces away really hit home.

I started sewing them together randomly, based on this Quiltville tutorial and several similar things that I saw on now-unremembered blogs. It was AWESOME. I didn't have to worry about perfectly cutting or piecing things. I just got to pick out fabrics and sew them together. Additionally, each time I picked up a fabric, I got to remember where it came from and if it had a history.

I made a bunch of blocks, then assembled them all into this quilt:

The sashing is plain black cotton and the blocks at the intersections are various pieces of the fabrics that I used in the scrap blocks. The borders have the same fabrics in them as well.

I didn't want to buy yardage for the back of the quilt, so I rummaged about and came up with several totally unrelated fabrics that all happened to have black in them. Good enough. I had to creatively piece them together in order to make a section large enough to cover the back. Good thing that I had made extra scrap blocks for the back section.

You can't see the patterns on these backing fabrics very well in this picture, but the center piece is a geometric pattern, bordered by a print with sewing tools above and school supplies below. The next print on either side is an awful large flower print, but it actually went pretty well with the others. These are bordered by brightly colored fish below and a text-based multicolored design that says "craft". Really the ONLY thing these fabrics have in common is that they have a black background. However, once they were all together, I loved them. So does my mother, who got this quilt for Christmas.

Sadly, pictures taken with my cell phone don't seem to display this quilt to it's best advantage. It's much brighter and more exciting in person.