Have you ever wanted to make a quilt, but felt too intimidated to even try? Me too! But I didn’t let it stop me. I jumped in and quickly found out there was a reason to be intimidated. Matching up fabric patchwork does require precision and care. And, honestly, my first quilts weren’t exactly “award worthy”, but they were well loved by my children!

And now, I am newly inspired by Ann’s quilt in progress at Ann Wood Handmade.

Foundation quilting is the way to go!

The beauty of this type of quilting is that you can get through your scrap pile and make some pretty accurate squares. You just prepare a stack of squares from some fabrics that you don’t want to see. I happened to have lots of little bits of natural muslin and white leftover pieces of sheeting, but you could just as easily use any fabric that you have in your stash, but don’t exactly love.

From there, you pull out your scraps and start flipping and stitching! You don’t have to be precise- in fact, this is the same method used for crazy quilting. Basically the technique is to lay your scrap down on the foundation square, pretty side down. Then, you flip the scrap over, right side up and give it a press. Repeat this process until your foundation square is covered. It’s okay to end up with scraps overlapping the foundation, you can just trim them away and now you have more scraps for the next square!

I am determined to use up my scraps. I have a bin plus three big plast bags full of scraps from other projects and I want to see this pile disappear!

I’ll keep you updated as I move along. Let me know if you plan to quilt along too!