Use Fabric Scraps Creatively with a “Quilt-in-a-Bag” Project

If you’re someone who has been sewing for any time at all, a scrap quilt might be the perfect project to help you manage that growing collection of fabric scraps you don’t know what to do with. Yes, there are countless projects that can make good use of small pieces of fabric, like this Dog Poop Bag Holder project we posted recently on the blog, but even so you’re often left with odds and ends.

One way to turn this problem into an opportunity is to see it as a puzzle that will help you flex your creative muscles and get you looking at color and texture in new and exciting ways. That’s where one of my favorite ideas for dealing with scrap fabrics comes in: the Quilt-in-a-Bag!

1. Fabric scraps. There are really no strict guidelines to follow here, as long as you can attach them to another scrap, they’ll work.
2. Bags to keep you organized. I use (and re-use!) some basic plastic zip bags for these projects. When I finish a project, I shove my scraps in and forget about them.
3. A sewing machine (you could hand sew, but it will be much harder and undermine some of the quick decision-making).
4. (Optional) Quilt batting. You don’t technically need batting, but I always end up with scrap batting and don’t like to waste it, so I usually have enough to use for something!

This is one of my favorite ways to use up the scraps that come from completed projects. When I’ve finished making cuts for more carefully planned quilts or other projects, I (messily) bundle up the scraps in a bag, store them away, and then, when I’ve hit a bit of a block and don’t know what to make, I can pull them out and get to work.

Part of what makes this exercise fun (and powerful!) is that it pushes you to work creatively within some constraints. Where quilting usually requires careful measurements and precise arrangements, with a Quilt-in-a-Bag, we can quiet our inner perfectionists and take some creative risks.

You really start your quilt-in-a-bag as soon as you start saving up those scraps, but, assuming you’ve already got that, it’s helpful to take some time to lay out the fabric you have available.

For this project, I had some old yellow sheets that are a quite low-weight cotton, the red cotton scraps from a shirt that I had thrifted and upcycled, the legs of a pair of jeans that I had cut into shorts some time ago, and a small roll of cotton batting. Laying out the fabrics, I began to think about how these colors could work together.

Next, I began using my rotary cutter to make my scraps into more manageable shapes and sizes. Using a rotary cutter is a huge help with a freeform project like this, because you can make quick decisions and see where they lead you. I didn’t measure these, but used the guidelines on the rotary cutting mat to get rough approximations. Remember, perfection isn’t the goal here!

If you’re not sure where to start, here are a few questions you can ask yourself to get the creative juices flowing:

1. Are there any colors you typically are drawn to using together? Try doing the opposite!
2. Are there any fabric weights that you aren’t sure will work together? Give it a shot!
3. Do you have any tiny scraps? See if you can piece them into something larger!

Finally I was ready to begin sewing. I decided to start by creating some rectangular pieces by sewing together the red fabric with some pieces of the pale yellow and white scraps that I had. I also began to make squares out of the denim cuts.

At this point in a standard quilt project, you might have organized your quilt blocks (maybe you followed the tutorial to create these super beginner-friendly bow tie blocks), and you’d be ready to start piecing them together.

With this project, you’re going to need to make some more decisions about your pieces and arrangement. This is another great opportunity to push yourself into making some unusual decisions and blow past your creative limitations!

On my first pass of “quilt blocks,” I arranged them in a somewhat ordered manner, building a perimeter of the yellow and blue fabric with an asymmetrical “pool” of the red and white fabric in the middle. While this was somewhat interesting, I found it was a little too unbalanced and disjointed for my taste.

At this point, I used another trick to think creatively and tried to move pieces around so that at least half of them were in places they had not been before. This led me to work out a more abstract arrangement that used the red splashes to lead the eye around the quilt top. I also flipped some of the jean pieces upside down to introduce another shade of blue that I thought helped balance the dark red fabric.

Working piece by piece, without much method to the madness, I began sewing the scraps together. As I worked, I occasionally pulled in some small pieces from the scrap pile to fill in gaps and make the pieces large enough to be joined together.

Another tip when working with abstract quilts is to take advantage of “sashing,” a technique in which you use strips of fabric to keep different blocks separate when joining them together. Similar to adding an outline to an illustration, this can help an otherwise chaotic piece look cleaner and clearer. For some great advice, you can check out this sashing blog post.

At this point, I took stock of what I was liking and what still wasn’t really working for me.

1. First, as much as the chaotic coloring was fun to work with, I still wasn’t seeing enough cohesion. One way I figured I could fix this was with the quilt binding, which I hoped to use to introduce a little more red.
2. Second, I knew I either needed to introduce some more fabric, potentially in the form of much larger sashing, or I would need to pivot this project into something other than a full quilt. My “quilt-in-a-bag” had a lot of small pieces in it this time.
3. Finally, I realized I was most drawn to the pieces that had a wide variety of seam directions. The more grid-based blocks felt the most unintegrated while the blocks that included diagonal seams felt like they had more color and tone balance.

It’s important to note that these aren’t hard and fast rules. They’re certainly not always going to be the case, but this project is all about experimenting and (hopefully) surprising yourself along the way. Starting without a destination in mind is a great way to make new discoveries that will help you a lot when you get back to work on your works-in-progress.

Realizing that I wasn’t loving the idea of expanding the quilt top into a larger piece, I decided to move forward with smaller mini-quilts that I could use as trivets and pot holders. You can follow a great tutorial for how to make hot pads here, or you can follow the basic process of finishing a quilt, just much smaller.

You might notice that there are still lots of scraps left—that’s to be expected. To wrap up this project, I gather these odds and ends, fold them up as neatly as I can, and put them into bags to be used in a future scrap project.

A quilt-in-a-bag might not solve all my organizational problems, but it does help me keep my fabric scraps from spilling over and, more importantly, it keeps me making new work and trying new things. Give it a shot the next time you’re feeling uninspired!

Fred

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My name is Fred Tally-Foos and I’m a writer and happily amateur quilter living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with two cats and far too many fabric scraps. When I’m not writing about astrology or spirituality on my blog, recycling old pieces of fabric for new projects, or picking up a new hobby, you can usually find me cheering on the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park.