Plaid-ish Scrap Quilt (and Tutorial)

I have mentioned it before, but I am making a real effort this year to burn through some of my scraps. So far I have made 4 scrap quilts (see here, here, here, and here), but there are still so many scraps in my bin.

There were a large number of long, skinny strips and leftover charm squares and I wanted to make a quilt that used as many of them as possible. After playing around with a few ideas, I decided to give a plaid-inspired design a try.

In order to make the plaid look show through, I used a mixture of blocks that play with value. It is a particularly good way to use scraps because pretty much any color can work in the quilt. This pattern uses tiny squares, skinny strips, rectangles, and (charm size) squares.

Since I had so much fun making this quilt, I knew that I wanted to write up a tutorial. It is available (for free) in my shop and it is also available in my story highlights on Instagram. Even if you aren't normally an Instagram fan, I would suggest checking them out because I do a little more explaining in the videos and I am also going to be posting responses to any questions that I get about the tutorial.

Even though I wrote this quilt with scraps in mind, it also works well for yardage and I think it would be a lot of fun in solids.

I used 90" wide minky to back my quilt. It is the first time I have used it and it was fantastic! In the past, I have only used minky on smaller quilts because I didn't want to piece it for the backing, but the 90" version solves that problem and I had no issues with it while quilting on my home machine.



If you plan to make this pattern, I do have a few suggestions for you to help make the plaid-effect noticeable.

• Make you are using the darkest dark value fabrics, the lightest light value fabrics, and the medium-est medium value fabrics. There is a whole spectrum of value and you don't want darks that are too light or lights that are too dark. That being said, I was not strict about this with my quilt because I was more interested in just using what I had.
• Use the black and white photo mode on your phone to help distinguish value. Sometimes it can be tricky to see! 
• Busier prints are a little risky to use here - obviously I used them, but they tend to have a mix of values.
• If you are going to shrink (or expand) the size of the quilt by adding or subtracting blocks, use the coloring sheet to help you plan. 

If you have any more questions, check out my Instagram stories and hopefully I have already answered them! (or you can ask them in the comment section below)