I’m very happy with this squirrel of a scrap quilt. Dash, Dash Dot just kinda happened after the fabric scrap boxes in my sewing room pressed the overwhelm button in my brain. My scrap organising is based on fabric size and colour. Nine shoe box sized lidded bins contained most of the scraps  smaller than a fat quarter (but not strings – that’s another overwhelm story!). These were so full the lids couldn’t be jammed on and, more significantly, rifling through one of the bins to look for a suitable piece of fabric created such a mess, requiring much refolding to flatten the scraps back into the box. I had to admit a ‘systems failure’!

To cut a long story short… I did indeed do a lot of cutting… I went through each of the nine boxes. Any long pieces of fabric narrower than 5″ were cut into 2¼” strips to be used for binding, shorter strips were cut into 2½” x 5″ rectangles or 2½” squares and the rest were flung into the strings box. I even managed to throw away a few odd shaped or unlovely fabrics 😲 All this cutting and sorting has resulted in the nine bins now being much more functional: they now contain colour sorted fabrics which are smaller than a fat quarter but at least 5″ square AND the lids close!

Of course I was left with a large collection of cut and colour sorted rectangles and squares. I sat down with paper and pencil and came up with the Dash, Dash, Dot block. It’s a bit of an unconventional size, 12″ x 11″ finished, but the blocks fit together easily creating a bit of a zig-zag pattern. I’ve written a quick Dash, Dash Dot Block crib-sheet if my quilt has put you in the mood to use up some of your 2½” wide scraps (it’s an ideal way to use up left-over pieces from Jelly Roll strips). Just click on the link for a free PDF download of the Dash, Dash, Dot block pattern 🙂

Dash, Dash, Dot Block Pattern PDF Download

Back to my quilt. I added borders made from left over strips of fabric and more of the 2½” squares.

The ‘use it up’ vibe went out the window for the backing. I went out and bought a length of extra wide fabric. The print of echoes the quilt top really well. And I had to buy some wadding – I chose Sew Simple Bamboo/Cotton blend.

I decided to echo quilt wavy lines using a variegated 50wt Auriful thread. I stitched the lines 1½” apart. Amazingly the part-used spool of thread didn’t run out so I went for it, quilting wavy lines the other way across the quilt to create a wavy grid.

The scrappy binding strips were taken from my stash of binding offcuts along with some of those 2¼” strips I cut when I sorted the scrap bins.

This Dash, Dash, Dot measures 51″ wide by 66″ long with the blocks in a 4 x 5 layout. I say ‘this’ as I suspect there will be other Dash, Dash, Dots. The supply of fabric scraps never dries up does it?

Linking with Alycia for Finished or Not Friday and Nina-Marie for Off the Wall Friday. Alycia is on a roll with yet another quilt finish to share while Nina-Marie shares her thoughts on her visit to a sewing expo. Both have an interesting gallery of linked posts to look through too 🙂

Allison