Scrap Stash Heart Gems Quilt

Today I’m sharing the Scrap Stash Heart Gems quilt I made a while back. Scrap stash quilts are some of my favorite type of quilts to make. And they are just that… quilts made entirely from my scrap stash.

Hearts Gems was the annual heart quilt last year and it’s nice and scrappy friendly and stash friendly.

You can find the Heart Gems quilt pattern in the shop here.

Scrap Stash heart quilt

Each year I try to make the annual heart quilt very stash friendly. And even scrap friendly if possible. Heart Gems is a really great scrappy quilt because you can cut all of the pieces from your scraps and mix and match them like crazy.

Rainbow scrap stash quilt

One of my favorite type of scrap stash quilts to make is a rainbow fade version. With a rainbow fade version you are using just about every color scraps. While some of us might not have enough pinks for example for an entire quilt, this allows you to use a few scrap pieces from each color.

To make a rainbow scrap stash quilt, I usually figure out how many blocks there are and then divide them by the number or colors I plan to use. Then you know how many of each block to make. In this case I think it was about 3-4 blocks per color way.

Low volume scrappy background

I somehow end up with a lot of low volume scraps so it’s always satisfying to use them in a scrap stash quilt like this. For a low volume scrappy background I’ll choose either full on scrappy or stick with prints that all read the same color. So all white or all cream. In this case, I just went for full on scrappy and have a variety of shades as the background.

This Glowing quilt is an example of using all of the same tones in the background.

Free motion quilting on the Juki

I decided to practice my free motion quilting on this scrappy Heart Gems quilt! I don’t free motion very often and am definitely in the practice and learning stage. I came up with this hybrid quilting design to practice my free motion quilting skills.

First I used a walking foot and quilted 1.5 inch spaced straight lines. Then I switched over to a free motion foot, turned my machine sideways and added these cute little scallops.

It was so fun! The quilt was already nice and secure from the straight lines so all I had to focus on was making those scallops. I need to try more free motion quilting because it really is a fun change from straight walking foot lines.

I’m calling these “organic scallops”. It was a great way to practice free motion because I wasn’t trying to make them all exactly the same. You have some freedom to be less then perfect with them.

The background is a Ruby Star Society Spark fabric in the color frost.

I accidentally left this quilt out on the bed after photographing it and the 5 year old promptly claimed it. She’s been using it lately on the couch and to play with so I can’t complain.