I have finished a quilt! I thoroughly enjoyed the process of making this ‘Super Scraps Skewed’ quilt and what’s more I’m really bowled over with the finished quilt – so happy 🙂

The design was inspired by Amanda Jean Nybergs ‘Scrap Vortex’ tutorials back in 2015. I had other projects underway and didn’t follow along but my collection of scraps grew even as I kept the making of a scrap quilt on ‘the back burner’. As the idea continued to nudge me it merged with the desire to make a leaders and enders quilt. I am a paid up member of the leaders and enders club – sounds like an exclusive club for politicians and assassins! – as the use of these little, folded pieces of fabric at the start and end of every seam or chain piecing run produce secure stitches and reduce thread wastage.
Once the scrappy centre was pieced and squared up, I paused wondering, ‘To border, or not to border? That is the question.’ The answer came back: ‘Why not try a wonky border?’ Hum! This caused a mathematically challenged quilter – that would be ME – quite a few issues. Thankfully I had a large chunk of extra wide backing left from a previous project. This was long enough that the borders would not need piecing. I lay the scrappy centre at an angle on top of the border fabric, slipped a sheet of A4 paper between the two layers and used a ruler edge against the edge of the scrappy fabric to draw a line and create a template.

I used the template to set rulers on the border fabric and cut out four strips (ensuring the with-grain edge of each could be placed on the outer edge of the quilt top).
I stitched the borders to the quilt centre in the usual sequence – sides first then the top and bottom. Alas when I laid the quilt out flat I discovered it was not square – the top edge was a couple of inches wider than the bottom edge. Doh! I think this may have been due to the scrappy centre not being properly square and also the vast number of seams along with the exposed bias edges creating quite a lot of ‘give’ across the entire quilt top. After a lot of humming and ahhing, not to mention crawling around on the floor with tape measures and rulers, I succeeded in finding a workable solution: trimming two of the outer edges. This did, of course, leave me with biased fabric on the perimeter of the patchwork but I decided free motion quilting up to the edge would probably help pull the fabric into the quilt and avoid the curse of wavy borders.
Once I’d pieced the back, including a label 🙂 I used curved safety pins to put together the quilt sandwich. I drew out a rough quilting plan and then used my walking foot to stitch the lines dividing the quilt into six unequal segments.

Then I set up my machine for free motion quilting and tried out some new-to-me designs. To aid muscle memory I first drew out designs on paper, then had a go on a practice sandwich before transferring my attentions to the actual quilt. Trying to keep the stitching lines a consistent distance apart was a bit tricky but I persevered knowing this very busy patchwork design would hide less-than-perfect quilt stitching pretty effectively 🙂 I used Aurifil 2600 (light grey) 50wt thread for the top and in the bobbin.


The scrappy binding is mainly left over binding strips from other projects with a few scrap strips added for good measure. All of the materials in this quilt came from my stash, including the Soft & Bright poly wadding. The finished quilt measures 50″ by 54″.
This quilt is my One monthly Goal for January. I’m pleased to have gone beyond my aim of getting it to the quilting stage and actually be recording it as a FINISH. Linking with Patty at Elm Street Quilts for the OMG January Finish Link-up.
Also linking with Amanda Jean for Finish It Up Friday.
Allison