Scrappy 9-Patch Blocks for Carolina Crossroads

In this post, I hope to explain how I make a scrappy quilt. So many people who see my home quilts will comment on their own inability to put a scrap quilt together. Nearly all my throw size and bed sized quilts are scrappy, gradually made over as long as a year. Some are limited in colors (like my red, green, and cream Christmas quilts shown below in older posts).

See my Web Shots album for some examples (click the link on the left).

In the pic above, you see the beginnings of my 100 nine-patch blocks needed for the Carolina Crossroads mystery quilt that Bonnie is hostessing.

When I pieced these, I took scraps of black (MY accent color) and made a strip of black, color, and cream, paying absolutely no attention to what color the color was, or the cream for that matter.

Then I took a color and put a cream on each side. These are all long strips (well, as long as the scrap would allow, and all from my 1-1/2" wide strip bin). Lastly I took a cream with a color on each side. I just made a bunch of each size on Friday, knowing it wasn't nearly enough.

Saturday, while I was waiting for my children to finish their cantata practice at church, I subcut these strips into 1-1/2" wide pieces to make the 9-patches. I kept a tally (the 3 x 5 card on the left side) to see how many I had of each strip needed. I had enough to complete 46 blocks (held together in groups of 10 with pins), so now I know how many more I need.

The great thing about making some blocks and then having to make more is that I can see if I'm heavy on one color. I know I need more greens and browns to round things out.

I do NOT worry about a weird fabric that might stand out. One of the other tricks of scrap quilt making is distributing the weird fabric over the face of the quilt so it doesn't all end up in one corner. Another way to cover that is to purposely add several other weirdos (sorry, fabric collection--nothing personal). If it's still ugly, it hasn't been cut small enough. I liked that fabric enough at one point to BUY it, right??

I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment of the mystery. I've never done one before. I am not even curious to know the final design. Just blindly following and trusting Bonnie. Lead on!

~Joan