It’s time to share another fun finish! This is Scrap Happy, patterned in the October issue of American Patchwork and Quilting (available now) and I’m pleased that it happened to make the cover!

Photograph used with permission from American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine. ©2017 Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved.

One of the things I love best about American Patchwork and quilting is the photography. Even those this quilt is about the piecing, I love how well you can see the quilting on the cover shot and in the pattern directions themselves.

The quilting on Scrap Happy is a good example of my “divide and conquer” method I teach in my quilting classes. First I stitched in the ditch around each row of blocks (vertically on each side). Then I outlined the ditch using the edge of my walking foot/dual feed as a guide for spacing. Once the straight line quilting was done, I moved onto the free motion motifs.

Here’s a closeup shot of my own camera-phone photo that I took while making the quilt:

I love combining walking foot quilting with free motion in the same quilt! Fabric selection tip: flip over the back of many medium prints to get more variety of lights.

In the scrappy blocks I quilted “woven switchbacks”, which is basically rounded back and forth lines that go in alternate directions in each square. Finally, I quilted “swirls and pearls” in the light backgrounds, combining elongated swirls with pebbles for an interesting design.

Here’s another beauty shot of the whole quilt as photographed in the magazine:

Photograph used with permission from American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine. ©2017 Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved.

As you can see – this is a BIG quilt, and yes I actually quilted it on my regular home sewing machine. The key is to “scrunch and smoosh” the bulk of the quilt out of the way as you go, rather than trying to fold it or roll it. Just remember that you are only working with a small part of the machine at any time and if you can keep that area nice and flat, you won’t have any problems.

The design for this quilt is based on a traditional block called “Mock Log Cabin” because of it’s half light/dark coloring. Just like a log cabin, you can set the block a million different ways. I originally designed and made a quilt from similar (but larger) blocks back in the 90’s when I was going through my dusty pink and blue phase, but I prefer the newer version with updated scrappy bright prints. It’s also perfect for using up precut scraps! (In fact, I actually threw in many of the leftovers from my latest book when making this quilt!)

An alternate layout for the blocks (not included in the pattern).

Thanks to EQ7, I was able to play around with many different settings before I chose the final layout. Here’s another tip: when working in EQ7, I don’t always have to color the quilt exactly how it will appear. If I’m making a scrappy quilt, I might just mock it up in one colorway as shown in these two examples, knowing it will look great in any color scheme.

Another alternate block layout – it’s so fun to play!

When working on this design I thought I would make it smaller – but when I realized how many scraps I had, I ended up making it much larger! I really like quilt designs that are easy to size up or down, simply based on the number of blocks that can be made.

Photograph used with permission from American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine. ©2017 Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved.

The best tip I can give when making this quilt is to just make a few blocks at a time as your scraps accumulate. It’s quite a lot of pieces and you’ll go a little stir crazy trying to make all of the blocks at once. Plus if you use your scraps as you go, you’ll get a really fun scrappy look that will add to its charm.

Click here to see more patterns in the October issue of American Patchwork and Quilting and pick up your copy if you don’t already have a magazine subscription. If you end up making this quilt, do let me know!

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