Stripology ruler | NW Quilted Cat

Hi everyone,

I have a very large shoe box, the kind that fits boots, behind my sewing area where I toss scraps from projects that are large enough to reuse. These scraps have been growing and growing until my box was overflowing.

Then, I noticed that @thehomebodycompany and @the.weekendquilter were hosting an Instagram scrap busting sew along called the “Scrappy Summer Sew Along” with the hashtag, #scrappysummersal2020. This sew along uses a free pattern, which contains some different sizing options for using the simple 9-patch block for the quilt.

I dumped out my scraps and started sorting into color groups.

Sorting scraps

Wow, that got tiring fast in my very warm sewing room so I took a little break. When I came back into the room, I found my cat, Romeo, decided to reorganize things a bit.

Romeo reorganizes the scraps

I convinced Romeo to let me continue sorting by color. As the piles grew, I started thinking about how I wanted my scrappy quilt to look. I decided to do a limited color palette by using just pinks/reds and yellow scraps for a raspberry lemonade theme. My background will be a white-on-white fabric from my stash.

I’m making the rectangular throw size quilt so I needed to cut hundreds of 2″ squares from my scraps and hundreds of 2″ squares from my background fabric.

For the background fabric, I used the XL Stripology Ruler by Creative Grids to first cut the 2″ strips, and then sub-cut the strips into 2″ squares. This ruler is a lifesaver! I cut out all my pieces quickly and accurately without any hand fatigue. I highly recommend investing in one of these rulers.

Here’s a look at some of my pretty 2″ squares, just waiting patiently to be sewn into 9-patch blocks.