Scrap Square Rail Fence

As I was going through my sewing room, I found so many things I had cut with the best of intentions, but somehow got set aside. Most of it, I knew exactly what I had planned, but some of those, I no longer wanted to go along with my original plan. Some of those I using in other projects that I am more excited to do.

I had a stack of 3.5x15.5" cut gray rectangles. I knew I had cut them for a hashtag quilt, but I've already got at least two hashtag quilts going, where the blocks are done but I need to assemble the quilt top. I could have cut those rectangles down into other sizes, but I looked around for scraps I already cut that could work with them. I had a big box of 3.5" cut squares. Five of those sewn together would be the same length. I started playing around with EQ8.

I could make columns of just alternating strips and blocks, and flip every other column over. This quilt would be 50% scraps, 50% background. 

I could make rail fence blocks with 5 rails, every other rail being blocks. If I make rails 1,3, and 5 from my scrap squares for every block, I end up with this.

With all the rail blocks made the same way, the quilt is 60% scrap squares, and 40% background.

Would it look better if I made half the blocks with rails 1,3 and 5 scrappy, and the other half the blocks rails 2 and 4 scrappy? It would be 50% scraps, 50% background.

All of them were valid options, but I liked the idea of busting more scrappy squares, so I chose option 2.

Here is just one block...

...and here's a quilt set 4x5 on the design wall. With those big 15" blocks, a 20 block quilt will be 60x75 without borders. When DH saw the quilt on my design wall, he said, "It looks like a maze quilt, but it isn't." I agreed, and told him it was much easier to sew than a maze quilt. The designs it makes to me looks like vertical and horizonal belt buckles. 

I'm sure I'm not the first to make this block, but I did not get it from a pattern, it was just what I came up with to use the rectangles I had cut, with the scrap squares I had cut. I have a lot of squares in my scrap user system that I could make this block with. If you use squares cut from 2.5" jelly roll strips, the finished block size would be 10" Use 2" cut squares, and your finished block size would be 7.5", 1.5" cut squares, and you'd have 5" finished blocks. My preference when busting scraps is to have less than 50% background, so making every block the same and only having 40% background fits that goal better. 

I'm going to end up with 2 quilts from these blocks, plus a couple orphan blocks that will likely make their way into a quilt backing. That's fine with me, I busted those strips without going into any yardage at all. I always try to use scraps first, otherwise they never go down!