Afraid of Using Novelty Prints? Don't Be!

I've read a lot about quilters being afraid to use novelty prints in a quilt. A themed quilt with novelty prints? No problem. A kid's quilt with novelty prints? No problem. But what to do with all those novelty scraps? That's where I think a lot of people get bogged down, including myself at times.

Early this year, I spent almost 2 months cutting up my scraps. I've had a scrap user system going for a while, but what was languishing was my bags upon bags of scraps leftover from a scrub top business. I had some scraps from other quilts thrown in there as well, but the scraps were overwhelmingly novelties.

In January, I offered a Pay it Forward deal on facebook. I would make something for five people, if they then offered to do something for five more people. I decided to try to use my newly cut scraps for some of those things.

I had divided all my scraps by color. Novelties are harder to divide by color than most fabrics, because most novelties have so many colors in them. I was mostly going by background color, unless the main color was the pattern. some were just impossible to divide by color, so those went in a multiple colors stack. After a bunch of sorting, my multiple colors stack just wasn't that big. Most fabrics can be divided by predominant color.

I decided one of my Pay It Forward projects would be Christmas themed. Does that mean I only used Christmas fabrics? Far from it, but I did stick with reds and greens. I cut all the reds and greens from my newly cut scraps, but I did pull one background fabric from stash. I made yet another piano key border to make a bigger dent in the scraps. So, how did it come out? You tell me!

I used Bonnie Hunter's Pineapple Blossom pattern, and I made 48 blocks set with sashing. With any distance, the blossoms are absolutely red and green, but what about close-up? Can you see those novelties coming out to play?

Let's check out this red blossom. I spy a baby carriage, Uhura from Star Trek, Kansas City Chiefs fabric, Santa Claus, a dragon, footballs, and soccer balls.

What about this green blossom? I see dogs, Green Bay Packers, a tractor, knights, and some actual Christmas fabric!

The Pineapple Blossom pattern uses flip and sew corners, which I LOVE! Why do I love them? Because flip and sew corners mean if I double sew, I get bonus HST's to play with. In this case, I used all the bonus HST's for another of my Pay It Forward projects.

Here is one of a set of four placemats I made for my last Pay It Forward project. Each of these placemats used 48 bonus HST's, which was perfect, since each Pineapple Blossom block yielded 4 bonus HST's,  and I had 48 blocks, so it worked exactly right, and I used every bit of fabric. One person gets the quilt, another gets the placemats, and yet I feel like I only did one project!

So now my Pay It Forward Projects are finished, I just have to give these last two away. I should be able to give the quilt away tomorrow, and I hope to get the placemats in the mail this week, I'm waiting on an address.

Tomorrow is the big scooter event, Monday we'll be going to Phoenix to see DS the Younger inducted into the Army, and then sometime this week, I'll have to start quilting the wedding quilt.