Rainbow Scrap Explosion

You’ve probably heard of the terms assigned to scrappy quilts- quilts that use anything and everything in your stash. “Scrap vomit” and “scrap vortex” are two terms that have been popularized (by Katy Jones of I’m a Ginger Monkey and Amanda Jean Nyberg from Crazy Mom Quilts, respectively). Although my work with multi-colored scraps this week leans more along the lines of the former rather than the latter, I’m going to call it a scrap explosion. In fact, that is the tentative name for the quilt. At any rate, I guarantee you will find some more endearing uses of multi-colored scraps if you hop on over to Angela’s blog to visit our weekly Scrappy Saturday roundup for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. We are all trying to use our our many-colored scraps in April.  Also linking up to Scraptastic Tuesday.

As for my work, please sit down and take an aspirin or ibuprofen, or whatever anti-nausea medicine works best for you. Grab a pillow and some coffee or cocoa, and make sure you are well rested. Ok. Ready?

These were my first 13 blocks (10”). I used this first pic in my last post because I’ve listed this X+ quilt as a goal for my 2017 Quarter 2 Finish-Along.  There are many considerations when selecting fabrics as you make these blocks, such as value, scale, color-matching, etc. And I ignored every single one of them.

But that’s not to say I didn’t think about fabric placement, it’s just that my first criterion was to find scrap fabrics large enough from which to cut (4) 4.5” squares - they become the X part for each block. And you can see below that I eventually threw that out the window, too. You can find a few blocks that have different fabrics in the X. Oh well.

So, long story short, in my experimentation I learned that some fabrics are just ugly no matter how small you cut them (sorry, dear Bonnie Hunter, but it’s true). And similar values placed in close proximity create visual mush.

But on the other hand, there is so much to like! This pattern is really fun, for starters. And some fabrics just shine (see the red fabric with the bright yellow daisies in the upper left, or the bright stripes in the center right?). Some blocks turned out great, despite myself.  The six blocks below are among my favorites.

The next group are the ones I like the least.  The fabrics are either too ugly, or there is mush (bad contrast) or both. Or they are just plain nausea-inducing.

The six below are somewhere in between, but I point them out because they either have some fun, whimsical fabrics in them or just somehow struck my fancy.

So, I've completed 36 blocks, and have enough for 6 more (total of 42 blocks). I`m undecided about the setting - should I do a 5x6 setting (30 blocks) or a 6x7 setting (42 blocks)? I’ve pretty much decided that they look better with sashing, and that will most likely be the determining factor. I would like to use what I have in my stash, and really don’t want to use black or white or cream (which I always have in the form of jelly rolls). Instead, I’d like to find either a colored solid or tone-on-tone that reads as a solid for the sashing and outer border.

Below I’ve pinned up some of the blocks with a piece of mustard Kona that I have. There is only enough of this color to do a 5x6 quilt with 2” sashing.

Then I have a large piece of this ombre orange sashing which is large enough to do a 6x7 block setting. That’s below with some sample blocks.

Which do you like better? Or maybe the question is better phrased as Which do you hate least?  LOL. There are no rights and wrongs here - just about any color will do.

And next week I should have a finished quilt top, although I would love to have the whole thing done, but we’ll see.  Then I have multi-colored strips to work with, so I'm researching ideas for those.

Before leaving, it’s only fair that I give you some restful eye candy if you’ve made it this far through the post.  My cousin Kim finished a baby quilt about a week ago - a baby quilt that she started back in the 1970s (!!!) and sewed entirely by hand (except adding on the binding, but even that part she finished by hand). I quilted it for her.

Aren’t those old ginghams glorious? They are Drunkard’s Path blocks in the barn-raising setting. I don’t remember the size, but it wins the prize as the oldest (former) UFO in our family!

DH is doing well after his (hopefully final) surgery last Monday. He is healing nicely in all surgical sites and is using his arm somewhat. There is a lot of healing, physical therapy and likely some radiation treatments in the future. We will know more after the next couple weeks of appointments. Once again, thank you all for your kindness and good wishes. They really helped us get through the tough times! Spring is coming, in more than one way.