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Raise your hand if you’d like to empty your scrap bins and make a pretty spectacular quilt along the way!

*hand raised and waving around madly*

I’m making a scrap quilt and I’d love for you to join me!

I had originally thought about just cutting all my tiniest scraps into two inch blocks and then sewing them together completely at random. That would be fun – in a way – but the call of pattern is too hard for me to resist.

Plus I know that that is one HUGE project and it will feel like a smaller project if I can have lots of “finished” bits along the way.

So then I decided to do a bunch of 10 x 10 square blocks, each one using only two colors.

I’m calling it Controlled Chaos. 🙂

This is going to be a regular series (that will help me actually finish it) with a goal of one block a week. We can make one block a week, right?

I’d love for any of you with overflowing scrap bins to join in!

Here’s Block #1. Simple. Classic. Stripes made out of itty bitty scrappy squares.

What you’ll need

• 50 two-inch squares of color A
• 50 two-inch squares of color B

Instructions

Use 1/4 inch seam allowance for all sewing.

Choose one color and sew 10 blocks together into a strip. Repeat until you have 5 strips of each color.

Press all the seams. I’m pressing mine open for this quilt. I think it will make things simpler in the end.

Sew the strips together, alternating colors.

Here’s the exploded view.

I think this block would have been more successful if I had tightened up the colors a bit more. I think the reds are good – they’re all red or very dark pink. But there’s a bit too much variety in the blues. I wish I had made them all dark blue or all light blue. It’s ok here because there is so much contrast between the red and the blue that it still clearly reads as stripes (and no way am I taking them apart) but it’s something I’ll keep in mind going forward.

Block #2 coming next week! Click here for all the Controlled Chaos posts.

Happy piecing!

Best,
Wendi