Scrap-Basket Bounty Blog Celebration - Day Four

Welcome back!  It's Day 4 of the Scrap-Basket Bounty Blog Celebration!  Thank you to all who visited earlier.  If you missed Days 1, 2, and 3, just click on the hyperlinks to visit those posts.  I'm sharing two or three quilts each day, and giving away copies of my new book and a few other things that I enjoy using when I design, sew, and quilt.  Scrap-Basket Bounty has patterns for 16 single-block quilts with additional layout options -- a total of 48 different quilt designs!

Yesterday, I was the guest writer over at Stitch This!, Martingale's blog.  I encourage you to visit there to see more details about Scrap-Basket Bounty.  They're also hosting a give-away -- just answer the hysterically funny question, and you could win a copy of the book.  

The quilts I'm sharing today are a few that have a number of pieces.  Unless you have super-powers, you won't be able to make these in a weekend.  But they're not quite as time-consuming as they look.  If you cut your scraps into strips following the measurements in the cutting list, then crosscut the individual pieces, the cutting will go faster and you can chain-piece mindlessly while you're listening to an audio book or half paying attention to Netflix.  

FOUR PATCH SPEEDWAY
Photography by Brent Kane

Four Patch Speedway is made with a single block, but rotating the blocks in various directions will allow you to create more designs than you would imagine.  It was difficult to choose two optional layouts for the book because there are so many possibilities.  

SNIPPETS
Photography by Brent Kane

Snippets is a Log Cabin variation that can be arranged in a multitude of settings as well.  I originally designed this block a few years ago and had started piecing it from a fabric collection named "Snippets" by American Jane for Moda Fabrics. I always called it the Snippets quilt.  When the time came to name this one, I couldn't get that name out of my head long enough to think of anything else.  So here we are.  :-) 

HONEYSUCKLE
Photography by Brent Kane

Although there are a number of pieces in Honeysuckle, each block has only three fabrics, and chain-piecing will also make this one go together a little quicker.

In each of the blog posts this week, I'm sharing about some of the "tools" I love to use when I make my own quilts.  One of my favorite tools is Aurifil 50-weight 100 percent cotton thread.  It's a really nice, high-quality thread that works beautifully for piecing as well as machine quilting.  The thread is strong, but it's thin, so it makes piecing more accurate, especially when sewing together lots of small pieces.  And since it's thinner than a lot of other threads, my bobbins don't run out as quickly.  

As much as I love piecing with Aurifil 50-weight thread, quilting with it is even better.  Because most of my quilts are really scrappy with a lot going on, I don't like to quilt with a heavy thread.  I like the quilting to blend into all the fabrics so that you notice the texture, and not the quilting lines.  And if there's any backtracking or close quilting, Aurifil 50-weight thread still blends into the quilt and doesn't create thread build-up.  I love using it in the top and the bobbin.  Since you won't be able to see the stitching on these quilts really well, here's a sample I quilted a few weeks ago using Aurifil 50-weight cotton on a solid fabric.  

I'm super excited about today's give-away.  Martingale has very generously offered to send a print copy of Scrap-Basket Bounty to the winner of a random drawing!  And (squeal!) Aurifil will also send the winner The Basics Collection curated by Mark Lipinski -- 12 spools of 50-weight, 100 percent cotton thread in the yummiest neutral colors!  They're perfect for piecing and quilting almost any project. 

If you'd like to win a copy of Scrap-Basket Bounty and Aurifil's The Basics Collection by Mark Lipinski, just leave a comment here and tell me which Scrap-Basket Bounty quilt is your favorite so far, and what you plan to do with all that  beautiful thread!  (And if you haven't already, don't forget to swing by Martingale's blog for another chance to win a copy of the book.)  The give-away here will close on Monday, October 1, at 10:00 p.m. CDT.  Winner will be announced at the end of next week.  

Thank you so much for visiting.  Hope you'll stop by tomorrow when I'll be sharing a bit about creating different layouts using a single quilt block.

Kim 

Update:  Comments are now closed for this post.  Thank you for visiting.