Sensational Quilts for Scrap Lovers: 11 Easily Pieced Projects; Color & Cutting Strategies by Judy Gauthier

Seeing the vibrant quilt on the cover, I couldn't resist looking into Sensational Quilts for Scrap Lovers. The author and designer Judy Gauthier writes, "Playing with my fabric scraps is my all-time favorite sport," and she can't stay away from devising new ways to use them. 

Gauthier shares tips for creating and storing your scraps, including odd shapes and scraps with bias edges. She offers advice on storing scraps by color. A brief course on color theory helps you decide on scrap selection for your project, including how to transition colors.

Along with her basic go-to Keystone block, Gauthier includes instructions on piecing curves.

I was pleased to learn that Gauthier stores her scraps in 3 1/2", 4 1/2" and 5 1/2" squares. I have been doing that for years! I store mine by size in baggies in a shoe storage tower similar to the one pictured below. (I have a second one filled with fat quarters!)

The eleven quilt projects include:

• Frontal Boundaries, which uses 4" blocks to make a 68 1/2" x 97" quilt. Gauthier transitions color to flow across the quilt. Detailed instructions ensure you can recreate your own version.

Frontal Boundaries

• True North's color transition starts in the center and extends outward. The two blocks offer an impression of a compass. The 8" blocks finish to make a 91" x 91" quilt.
• Argyle Sweater uses 8" blocks to make a 74" by 85 1/2" quilt. It was made with scraps left from True North. The overlapping on-point squares against a solid background recall the classic sweater design.

Argyle Sweater

• Split Screens' 16" blocks finish to a 48 1/2" x 64 1/2" quilt. It uses her Keystone block with a dark neutral allowing the colors to pop.

• Precious Metals, 60 1/2" x 70 1/2", is made of 5" x 10" blocks. The bias edges must be handled with care, but it's worth it for the affect. Gauthier's quilt of gold colored blocks interspersed with colored bars is stunning.
• Sleepy Tiny Tepee Town, 62 1/2" x 78", is made of blocks that look like camping tents or teepees. The bias edges need to be handled carefully, but the construction is quite easy.
• The Knit Stitch is composed of 10" x 5" blocks, 60 blocks creating a 50 1/2" x 60 1/2" quilt. Gauthier says the pattern leaves little waste. It could make a lovely gift for a knitter friend!
• Fractured Four-Patch is made of a four-patch triangle and finishes to 78 1/2" x 93". It is one of my favorites in the book, very scrappy, with value contrasts creating lots of movement. 

Fractured Four-Patch

• Circle gets the Square is made with 21" square blocks, nine making a 63 1/2" square quilt. Pieced low-contrast backgrounds made of squares are set with centered circle blocks. The piecing technique is for advanced sewers...but frankly, I would applique the circle!
• Aerial View finishes to 58" x 70 1/2", using 100 5 3/4" x 7" blocks. It is the color and value placement that recreates a feeling of fields from an airplane. It is a very Modern quilt.
• Sunrise, Sunset is the cover quilt and finishes to 77" x 80 1/2". It is constructed of half-hexagons set together with an appliqued central circle.

Learn more about Judy Gauthier at her websites

https://studioefabrics.net/judy-gauthier-1/

https://www.bungalowquilting.com/

Gauthier is a nurse and offers a tutorial for the mask pattern sold at her shop

https://www.bungalowquilting.com/tutorials/home-made-ppe/

I was given a free ebook by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Sensational Quilts for Scrap Lovers: 11 Easily Pieced Projects; Color & Cutting Strategies
by Judy Gauthier
C&T Publishing
Book $27.95; eBook $22.99
ISBN 9781617458682
eISBN 9781617458699

Crumbs and Scraps

What do you do with little pieces of fabric?

Some years ago I took my scrap box and played. I did a series of small quilts I called Crumb Quilts. I don't have pics of all that I made, but here are several:

I sewed scraps together and then trimmed them into rectangles or squares. Then I sewed the 'blocks' of scraps together. The deep border creates a frame that contains the crazy scraps, and offers a restful place for the eye. The quilts ranged from 12" to 16" in size.

The center quilt was made of 1 1/2" fabric samples.

The last quilt has a vintage fabric with mice running in a line so I appliquéd a cat and used a cityscape border. I call it Manhattan Melodrama!

 

Scraps have always been used in Patchwork. Like this 1960s era Grandmother's Flower Garden I shared last year.

 



 Or the one-patch quilt I wrote about several years ago.

And the Double Wedding Ring quilt I rescued a few months ago. I use my feedsack and vintage scraps to repair it, appliqueing over the worn patches.

And last year's East Side Detroit quilt I found at the flea market.

My mother-in-law developed 'Arthur-ritis' in her thumb and had to curtail her quilting. She wanted to use up her scraps. A favorite pattern was Aunt Suki's Choice. Each block has a four-patch unit of scraps.

 



A few years ago I started cutting my scraps into squares. I have squares of all sizes, from 1" to 20". I pull out these scraps for use in projects like Love Entwined. The background fabric was newly bought. Every other fabric is from my stash, yardage, fat quarters, and various sized squares.

I also have a small box of scraps with fusible backing, one of vintage fabric scraps, and a box of shirting fabrics. Another box has triangles, and one more applique shapes that were not used.

And they are all moving with me!

What do you do with your scraps?

Our Heirloom Quilts

Growing up  there were no quilters in my family. But in 1966 my grandfather took my mom and me with him on a trip 'back home' to Milroy, PA to visit his Aunt Carrie. And Aunt Carrie gave him and my grandmother a quilt which was given to my mom, who gave it to me in the 1970s.

Carrie V. Ramer Bobb was my grandfather's mother's sister. When Gramps lost his mother and then his grandmother, he was an orphan at the age of nine years. Sisters Aunt Carrie and Aunt Annie Ramer Smithers took turns raising him. My grandfather Lynne O. Ramer got a sound education, and worked his way through college and seminary and gaining a teaching certificate.

Aunt Carrie (1904-1971)

The quilt passed down to me is a Dresden Plate. The layers were machine sewn, with the backing turned to the front and sewn down. Then the plates were hand appliqued to the quilt!

The background fabric is white, the plate centers are light blue or medium blue.

The quilt was likely made in the early 1960s shortly before it was gifted to my grandfather. I expect that like most quilters, Aunt Carrie had a collection of fabrics that spanned the early 20th century and came from a wide variety of sources.  In September 1965 my grandfather wrote a letter to the Lewistown Sentinel about just where Carrie got her stash:

“Well we have stitched on another vacation patch to the crazy quilt of life. At the Richfield ‘Ramer clutch” several widely separated cuzzins brought bags of patches for Aunt Carrie Bobb of the Mifflin County Home, who has another Postage Stamp Quilt under way.

     “Aunt Carrie sews on this quilt between times devoted to the guests and writing 10 letters each week.  This year the patches came from Bethesda, Camden, Annapolis, Indianapolis, Sinking Valley, Allen Park and Berkley, etc., etc.—and a crazy assortment they were to be sure!”

   “Yet when a quilt is complete there is some manner of symmetry and form to the total, be it a Dresden Circles, a Field of Diamonds, a Double Wedding Ring or just a plain Postage Stamp.

     “Such is life! Patches added willy nilly, seemingly with no central purpose, yet the total displays an amazing degree of purpose.  A quilt is hard to see because we look at the patches, just like it’s said we can’t see the forest due to the single trees."

The fabric scraps from Allen Park and Berkley were from Michigan: Gramps lived in Berkley and his daughter Nancy in Allen Park.  The scraps from Annapolis was my mom's brother, Uncle Dave and his wife Pat.

Aunt Carrie Bobb's grandson, Sid Bobb, shared with me a photo of the two Aunt Carrie quilts he inherited, a Drunkard's Path variation in red and white and a Grandmother's Flower Garden variation in pastels.

I also have a quilt from my husband's side of the family, given to me by my mother-in-law. It was made by her grandmother, Harriet Scoville (Scovile, Schoville) Nelson, and was given to her daughter Charlotte Grace Nelson O'Dell,  then came to my mother-in-law Laura Grace O'Dell Bekofske.

Harriet Scoville  (1877-1951)and Aaron Nelson. 

Charlotte Grace Nelson and John Oren O'Dell, 1896

Laura Grace O'Dell Bekofske

 The quilt is a red and white Single Wedding Ring, with a polka dot backing, and tied with faded red and white floss.

The cotton batting is quite lumpy!

 The edges were turned in and machine sewn. A thread was never cut. The floss looks pink, but is pin or red and white.

 The quilt was kept in Laura's cedar chest and never used. Tannin in the wood left brown spots.

Laura made Gary and I several quilts in the early 1980s, a blue Log Cabin and a multi-colored Sister's Choice, much beloved by our son.

By the time I started to quilt in 1991, my mother-in-law was ending her quilting career. Arthritis had settled in her thumb joint. She instead took up counted cross stitch. Her vision remained clear and she enjoyed this work until her death.