I’ve been excited for this new Scrap Busting blog series for a loooong time… we all have a lot of scraps lying around, so here’s where you can learn how to use ‘em to create complete quilts! Our first project is a guest post from Alex, the super talented lady from HoffMamaCompany. Read on, and enjoy!

Hey y’all! I’m Alex, the maker behind HoffMamaCompany. I started quilting a couple years ago as a spur of the moment, “I’m so bored at home” project. I went from working full time to being a stay at home mom, and I absolutely needed this creative outlet to keep from going nuts! Immediately, I was hooked! My first quilt was sooo so far from perfect, but it remains the most used quilt in my house! Since then I’ve learned the importance of pressing seams (I thought this was a waste of time the first go around), precise cutting, and utilizing all the small leftovers. Which brings us to this post. Here you will find a fun way to use up all of those remnant, width of fabric pieces giving you the stink eye from your stash. If you’re anything like me, you love all sorts of fabrics, which actually bodes well for this tutorial! I love how this quilt became a beautiful mashup of floral, geometric, gingham, tie dye, and even snake prints!

I am so glad and humbled that Amber reached out to me for this guest post, and I was immediately inspired to create this quilt I’m calling Scrappy Summit.

So let’s get started! You will need A LOT of width of fabric strips, meaning the selvage-to-selvage measuring around 44 inches. How wide your strips are is up to you, but I went with 1.5 inches. You will sew your WOF strips together and press the seams open to make a nice flat piece. I chose to make six smaller sections for easier cutting. No matter how wide your individual strips are, once sewn together, each section must measure at least 15 inches wide.

(Amber: I also think you could totally sew together same-width strips to reach the WOF length requirement for even MORE scrappiness!)

So if you would like to use 1.5” pieces like this, you will need 90 WOF strips. This could be 90 different fabrics, or like mine, you could cut 6 strips from 15 random fabrics. I do love the idea of cutting a 1.5” WOF strip from each fabric I use for a year to bring them together to celebrate a year’s worth of projects! I will probably do that in 2020!

I decided to arrange six layouts with my 15 fabrics, sewing them together a different way each time. This became six sections measuring just over 15 inches wide, and each one was a unique arrangement. Once you have your sections, cut each of them across into five pieces 7.5” long. Once all six sections are cut, you should have 30 pieces measuring 15” x 7.5”.

One at a time, take the 15” x 7.5” pieces and cut them into two triangles. Save all the half triangle pieces left over and separate into right and left sides. Alternate the direction of your triangles per piece. If the base of the triangle is on the right the first time you cut, make sure the base of the triangle is on the left the next time. Continue to alternate in this method until the end. This creates the “right” and “left” sides and will give you more flexibility later on.

Make sure to leave AT LEAST a 1/4” from the edge of where you start cutting.

Do you like how I marked my own 7.5” ruler? A little masking tape and a sharpie is all you need. We get thrifty here at HoffMamaCompany!

Once you have all of your sections cut, you will have 60 triangles, 30 right half triangles, and 30 left half triangles. Remove 5 right halves and 5 left halves and set aside. Turn the remaining 50 halves into 25 fat triangles by joining the left and right halves.

Now you will use the same 7.5” triangle ruler to trim these 25 to size.

At this point, you have 85 scrappy triangles and 10 half triangles. I love the symmetry of 90 strips of fabric yielding 90 triangles (I know its 85 and 10 halves, but who cares lol).

Now for the background. I chose to use up the last of three different khaki colors I had on hand, but you could do this will one color or ten colors. Go crazy with a print! Either way, you will need at least 2.5 yards of background fabric. For each of my three colors, I cut 4 WOF sections at 7.5”. Each of those 12 strips are subcut into 7 triangles. This will make 84 triangles.

If you are using a print for the background, you will want to alternate the side of your base triangle like the section above. If using solids with no discernible right side, go ham and cut several at a time. You will have 24 half triangles left over, and in the spirit of scrappy quilts, we will use these to make a scrappy background triangle. If using a print, look for a right half and a left half to join. If you’re using solids, just grab 2 pieces and make a triangle. Using the same method as above, trim this scrappy background triangle down to size. You will need 10 half triangles (5 right, 5 left for prints) of the background fabric for later on. I needed a few extra scrappy background triangles to keep with my alternating method. Not bad, eh? Still with me? Let’s put this bad boy together.

Now that we have 85/10 of each foreground/background triangles, lets construct our rows. You can absolutely lay out all your scrappy triangles and make sure you like the composition, but I chose to roll the dice and just grab them at random. **I did alternate my background fabrics with a purpose, which is why I needed more scrappy background triangles**

For the top row, start with a full scrappy triangle facing up. The second row will start with a full background triangle facing down. Continue with this method fora total of ten rows. Each row will have a total of 17 whole triangles with a half triangle on each side. Make sure your scrappy triangles always have the stripes going up and down, and that the bottom triangle is a scrappy triangle. It is SUPER important with any equilateral triangle quilt your seams are always a perfect 1/4”. I like to line up my new piece with the dog ear created from the last seam.

I like to sew all my whole triangles together first, and then go back and attach my half triangles last. After that, it’s just assembling the rows together.

And that’s that! After basting and quilting, this trims down to a 70” x 70” super cozy, scrappy quilt!

I really love how this project came together, and I love how versatile this pattern can be! I can see so many different combinations. I hope to see someone make this with a variety of solid strips and a printed floral background!