Scrappy quilts: a case study

I’ve made enough quilts by now that I can say that the ones I find most gratifying (and challenging) to make are the scrappy ones. Usually these projects start out as low-stakes experiments inspired by a pile of scraps. But somewhere along the line they morph into something more coherent. Other things I enjoy about scrappy quilts: every time I look at a finished one, I notice something I hadn’t seen before (e.g. the way certain colours or patterns play off each other) and they serve as a trip down memory lane, reminding me of all the projects whose scraps became this quilt. 

So I thought I’d share some tips I’ve picked up along the way about making coherent scrappy quilts. But first a caveat: Usually the hardest, most time consuming part of this process for me is the fabric pull (and subsequent iterations thereof). If you want the look of a scrappy quilt but don’t have the stash or the time to find 10+ fabrics that all work together, pre-cuts of fabric collections are your friend. They give enough variety (often 20+ prints) in complementary colours to give the scrappy look, without having to pick each fabric manually. Indeed, making quilts from precuts of collections was my entry point into scrappy quilts, and I still make them when I want a quick quilting project.  So now on to the tips:

Tip #1: Learn about colour theory, and pick a consistent colour story

I usually make my initial fabric pull by eyeballing my scraps and stash and pulling stuff that looks like it will work together. I’ll sometimes snap a couple pictures on my phone (in natural light if possible) to see if anything looks glaringly out of place. Another tip is to look at the photo in black and white to get a sense of the value of the fabrics you have a good range of values.

However, for this quilt, I skipped the step of checking the fabrics in black and white, and it was only when I had cut the squares and laid out the quilt that I realized the pink and purple in the upper right didn’t work with with everything else going on. They are way too intense and vibrant, while the rest of the quilt is more muted earth tones. Instead, I rearranged my blocks and did another round of stash diving, and found some fabrics that did a better job of connecting the different parts of the quilt to each other. Now the colour story is much more consistent, however, it’s still not quite there yet. 

Tip #2: You might need a focus fabric, even on a scrappy quilt. 

If you’re pulling fabric for a non scrappy quilt, the guidance is often to first pick your focus fabric, then work from there to find fabrics that complement it. I’ll be honest that I rarely take this approach with scrappy quilts. Instead, I start with a theme and work from there. Sometimes, a theme is all you need, especially if you’re sticking to analogous colours (colours that are side-by-side on the colour wheel).

However, in our case study quilt, I felt that the mustard yellow in the middle diagonal, while thematically in line with everything else going on, didn’t make the quilt pop the way I wanted it to. When you find that a scrappy quilt isn’t popping the way you’d hoped, one trick I use is to look at fabric collections (or other quilters fabric pulls!) you’ve been drawn to in the past and see if you can find similarities or differences there. Here’s why this works: you probably have specific colour palettes and combos that you’re most drawn to (even if you don’t know it yet, but that’s another blog post), and the fabric collection that catch your eye probably share some of those themes. If you can figure out what makes them pop to your eye, it can be a good starting point in determining what your quilt needs. 

In this case, I realized that I’d pulled enough different colours into my quilt that we were now in organic rainbow territory. I’ve loved rainbows since I was a kid, but find these days I’m more drawn to rainbow gradients in organic earth tones (olive green, mustard yellow, maroon) instead of classic primary tones. That realization helped me see that this quilt was short or reds and blues and that one of those was probably a good way to go for the focus fabric on the middle diagonal.

Tip #3: If you’re using prints, think about themes and motifs.

I was initially aiming for organic looking florals/botanicals/animal themed fabrics in this quilt (the astute fabric fiend will notice AGF’s Wild Forgotten line appears here several times). When I ran out of fabrics like that in my stash to work with, I pulled in some simple geometric patterns, both to provide contrast in the nine patches, and some less busy diagonals in the 6″ squares. While digging in my stash for reds and blues for the centre diagonal, I found a deep red fabric that worked great for colour, buuuut unfortunately didn’t fit with the other prints at all. It had big dynamic art (something I wanted in the focus fabric) but was too modern to fit with the theme of the organic prints, and too loud to fit with the other geometric prints in the quilt. It felt like it was bringing in an entirely new theme, and since there was already a lot going on in the quilt, I had to keep looking.

Tip #4: Use Mock-ups!

This is the part where I break my own rules and start fabric shopping for the quilt that was supposed to be all scraps and stash. I really didn’t have any organic florals/botanicals in red or blue in my stash, so I started shopping. I decided to stick to AGF fabric designers since there was already a lot of AGF fabric in the quilt. I found two possible options: a blue and red floral from the same collection. I would love to tell you that you can just take a screen shot of the fabric on the website and use your favourite image editor (I use Google drawings a lot for mock-ups) to see how it looks in your quilt, but unfortunately this is risky. It is highly unlikely that the light conditions in the studio where the fabric was photographed match the light conditions in your space, which can result in the fabric in question appearing differently in the block up (brighter or darker, more or less saturated) than it looks in real life. What you can do though is use this technique as a sanity check to make sure the prints work.

So alas, there’s no surefire way to know if the fabric you hope will work will actually work until you get it in the same place as your quilt, but if you’ve followed the tips above, you’ve probably tipped the odds in your favour. Mock-ups can still help here though! Once you get your new fabric home, you, can cut one square of it (or sew one block, depending on your pattern) and use an image editor to copy the block into all the places you want it to be. Now you don’t have to worry if the light matches any more, and you can be confident in your choice before cutting more pieces. In my case, I cut a block each of the red and blue florals and used a photo of my quilt on the design wall to mock up how each would look. I liked both but ended up choosing blue because it connected the greens and purples on either side. 

Tip #5: Lay it out — design walls (or floors!) are a huge help. 

If you have a space where you can lay out your blocks and iterate on them, I highly recommend using it for a project like this. Being able to see the whole quilt at once is hugely helpful in figuring out what works and what doesn’t. If you don’t have a space to do that (I didn’t when I made my first scrappy quilt a few years ago), keeping the color palette simple and the fabric style consistent increases your chances of not having to make as many changes further down the line.

Recap

Like the deliberately “mismatched” bridesmaid dresses of the 2010’s, the danger of a scrappy quilt is that if you pick your fabrics completely randomly, then your quilt will look, well, completely random. If you want your quilt to look scrappy, but still tell a coherent story, these tips can help you get there. To recap, here are the tips:

1. Use colour theory to pick a consistent colour story. Depending on the look you’re going for, this can mean using analogous colours, or earth tones, or vivid primary colours. The important part is to use this colour story to “audition” fabrics from your stash, to keep things consistent.
2. Consider a focus fabric. The flip side of a consistent colour story is that things can start to look too similar and even a bit muddy. If you find this happening, consider (sparingly) using a more contrasting fabric to give the quilt a focus.
3. Keep the themes and motifs of your prints consistent (pick two at most). Prints can make a quilt feel really busy, really fast. Pay attention to the themes and motifs of the prints you’re using, and try to limit your choices to two at most (e.g. botanicals and small geometric designs). Also note that small simple prints (dots, lines, etc.) often parse as solids from a distance, which can make things look less busy.
4. Use mock-ups. Google Drawings, Pre-Quilt, etc. all help you build confidence in your design. Use them to test out ideas before you’ve committed by cutting all your fabric.
5. Lay it out. When in doubt, lay it out. Looking at a quilt from a distance often reveals issues that are harder to notice close up. If you have a design wall, you can leave your blocks up there for a few days at a time and see what you notice about it each time you walk by.

(Scr/H)appy quilting!