Scrappy New Year - May 15

Let's re-cap. We started by building this little lap quilt, Holy Scrap, and finished it up last month.

Some of us are starting with this quilt as our inspiration for a larger quilt, though. We have made all of the sections shown above but are making them longer. We need to go wider as well.

To go wider, for starters, I am sashing my sections together. Adding the sashing strips also helps organize the quilt a bit. And I am making more pieced units.

I laid all the pieced sections out and auditioned a variety of colors for the sashing. Looking at a quilt through a camera lens helps get the best view of how it will look sewn up.

Once the sashing fabric is selected, I will cut sashing strips 2 1/2" wide. If you are making a larger quilt, it will take 2 strips for each row of sashing. I like to stitch all of my sashing strips together, end-to-end, measure the length of the center unit and trim all of the required sashing strips the exact same length. That will help keep you quilt squared up.

Stitch a sashing strip to each side of the Seminole pieced unit before trimming the points off. 

Just for reference, this is the Seminole pieced section.

Lay the sashing strip on the pieced section, right sides together as shown below. I experimented a little but found it easiest to stitch accurately with the sashing strip on top as I fed the unit under my presser foot for stitching

First, notice where the fabrics overlap. This is your 1/4" seam allowance.

The sashing strip lines up with the "v" edge of the red setting squares.

Above, I have drawn a line where the stitching will be.

After stitching, lay a ruler along the raw edge and trim off the excess points. Press all seams toward the sashing strip.

Our assignment this past month was to gather up spare parts and pieces from around the sewing room. Here are some of mine - -

These are nine-patches left over from a block exchange, all made in civic war era fabrics. 

These are half square units left over from another group block exchange. These are all brights and blacks.

And these are 5" squares of Civil War era fabrics from yet another group exchange. 

I worked these units into my long pieced sections, sprinkling in the brights between the civil war prints to make sure the quilt looked balanced with the center sections.

As the quilt grew, I realized I could use more units up by making more pieced sections. The quilt started to get wider than it was long, though! Remedy,- - -  I turned my quilt so the rows will be horizontal rather than vertical. Now it is a bed-size quilt which is what I prefer.

Next, see a few of my units laid out with red sashing strips.

This next picture is all of my pieced sections laid out with black sashing strips. Which one do you prefer?

I am leaning toward the black. Why? First, I do think it helps organize this very scrappy quilt. But, also because I already have these cut strips leftover from a Strip Club project we did in the shop.

That's it for this project. Check back next month for some more Scrappy New Year chat and don't forget to send me your pictures and scrappy comments.