I love postage stamp quilts. The whole idea of cutting scraps into little 2 1/2" squares and sewing them all together to see what you can come up with is tremendously appealing to me. With postage stamp quilts, there's no background fabric or sashing to buy.
There are 1296 squares in this quilt and every last one was cut and sewed together. No strip piecing for me, not in a project like this one. I pieced my squares into four patches, then assesmbled those into sixteen patches. I made sure not to repeat fabrics within each of those blocks, otherwise the colors all wound up wherever they fell.
I think I've confused some readers with my name for this quilt. I'm not calling the quilt itself drab. It's the fabrics I used that fit the dictionary definition: lacking brightness or interest; drearily dull. A lot of the fabrics in this quilt are just plain ugly. They're scraps from the thrift store bags that weren't bright enough for the baby quilts or pretty enough for my other projects.
A couple of years back, I used them to make a couple of little wheelchair quilts and fell in love with the look. I cut more square from those prints and dug through my stash to see how many fabrics I could find that met the "drab" criteria. Not all of the fabrics here are ugly. I mixed in bits of some of my favorite browns and other dark colors.
For more finishes, check out Sew Much Ado, Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, and Freedom Fridays, Wonderful at Home, Make it Monday and Inspired Friday.
Sometimes simple is best. Like you I just can't get enough of postage stamp quilts.
ReplyDeleteI'm a scrap quilter too,and have made many like this, but my definition of postage stamp quilts is squares that measure the size of a "postage stamp" which would finish 1" square! Yours looks great in the bigger size too.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you added one bright square would it stick out like a sore thumb. A sort of "let your little light shine" sort of theme... like Amanda's "spilled mustard" - drab grey and browns with one strip of bright yellow.
ReplyDeleteHugs
This is a lovely drab quilt. I love finding ways to make those "ugly" fabrics work in my project too.
ReplyDeleteI'm also a very keen maker of postage stamp quilts and I NEVER use strip piecing to make them. Where would be the fun in that? (LOL)
ReplyDeleteI don't know that I would have had the confidence to have made a quilt of drab fabrics, but now that I've seen yours, I think it looks fabulous.
Mind you, since much of my stash is very bright, I'm not sure I'd have enough variety of drab fabrics to be able to make an entire quilt without a lot of repetition.
Megan
Sydney, Australia