ScrapBuster Challenge

Do you have a hard time just randomly using fabrics in a quilt? I do. I seem to need some theme. Not necessarily a fabric line, but similar colors, or brights, or civil war; I need something to tie it all together.

I have a basket of Island Batik scraps from previous challenges – too small to fold up on a shelf but too large to throw away. How small does a scrap have to be to throw it away anyway? As I pulled out fabrics to use for this months challenge, I tended to go with brights.

My inspiration for this quilt was “All That Wander”, a Studio 180 Design pattern designed by Rosella Hanson of Get the Point Designs. I had already made this quilt(you can see the original, here), and was teaching it in a class at my local quilt shop, Bernina Connection. A couple of my students wanted to do the quilt scrappy. So, with this challenge in mind, I too started a scrappy version. Since I had already made the original quilt, I decided in would be fun to change the blocks around and see what would happen.

After playing with various designs in EQ8, I came up with this fun design below. I love that I can import my fabrics right into EQ8 to get a good idea of what my quilt will look like.

The quilt is made like a log cabin, but with some fun tweaks with the Studio 180 tools, Corner Pop 2 and the Wing Clipper.

After each round the blocks are trimmed using the Tucker Trimmer tool. I love this tool just for trimming blocks in general, but it’s really nice for keeping Log Cabin blocks trimmed.

I love the border of this quilt, created using the Corner Pop 2 tool.

The quilt seemed to have a beachy feel, so I was hoping for some beach pictures. When I had the opportunity to get to the beach, it wasn’t quilted yet, but there was this palm tree to help.

I always love when I have previously quilted a similar quilt; then I can repeat what I liked, but add improvements. I was very happy with how this one turned out. I used Aurifil thread

# 2770, 2520, 1320 and 2309. I used Schmetz Microtex needles for piecing. I like the precision a Microtex needles adds.