Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Scrap Vortex QAL :: A Finish

I used a combination of scraps and orphan blocks. I titled it "Tiger in the Scraps." It finishes at about 40" square. I find it interesting that it ended up square. This was not planned. Well, not much about this quilt was really what you'd call "planned."


This was fun to do, sort of like a jigsaw puzzle with scraps. The binding is from my roll of scrap binding, left over bindings from other projects all sewn together.

This QAL was hosted by Amanda of Crazy Mom Quilts. If you like working with scraps you should go check out her blog. She does beautiful work.

I took lots of photos as I worked, mainly for myself to see if things were working. In looking through them it was fun to see the quilt come together so I thought I'd share them below. If you aren't interested in the process photos (there are quite a few) then stop reading now, you won't miss anything else.

Here is how it looked on June 15th. These are the scraps I'd sewn together as Amanda instructed.


Then I raided my orphan block basket and pulled out some improv economy blocks I made a few years ago. 


I put them up on the design wall and started filling in the white areas with scraps and more orphan blocks.


Bits that were similar in size were sewn together.




Things moved around a lot and not everything I put up on the design wall ended up being used in the quilt.





For a while I had resigned myself to having to use at least one partial seam, but if you look closely at the above photo you can see that I managed to avoid partial seams in the end.


Above is the finished top. I quilted it with straight-ish lines. I did the lines free motion as I find that to be faster for me than a walking foot. By doing them free motion I can use my HQ Sweet 16.


And here it is again all finished.




6 comments:

Debbie said...

Oh this turned out terrific! I love the orphan blocks in there - doesn't it just add to the character of the quilt? And you quilting is perfect. What a nice finish!

West Michigan Quilter said...

I love how your quilt turned out. When I saw other scrap quilts, I had mixed feelings. But when I saw yours today I am inspired to do one. I think what I like about yours is that you've included both scrap blocks and UFO blocks. I especially like the cat block. i really want to do this now. Thanks for the inspiration.

Shelina (formerly known as Shasta) said...

Your orphan quilt is great! I've been collecting orphan blocks, ad making some more so I can make a quilt like this one. I hope mine turns out as nice as yours.

Mama Pea said...

What a great way to use up some orphan blocks. I was retreating with Amanda Jean, and Rene' was working on a scrap vortex quilt. What a great idea. I should do one someday.

Monica said...

This is a fun quilt, Lynn! I can see a block or two in there that I'd like to try, and, I really like the simple quilting too. Nice finish, congratulations!

Janie said...

I love it and thanks for sharing your design process so inspiring!