Scrap-plosion!

One of my unofficial goals this year was to use my stash.  I make a lot of scrappy projects, but most of them just use tiny bits - I grab a 2.5" square from this fat quarter, then a 3.5" square from that one, oh, and maybe a 1.5" by 2.5" rectangle over here.  My fat quarter boxes are overflowing and let's face it, some of the fabrics in them have been around forever and are just feeling a little stale.

I've been working hard (Forgotten Fat Quarter, Watermelon Quilt) at using up stash, but there's always more to get through.  Here are some of the recent projects I've undertaken to make room for new fabrics!

First, Blueberry Jam. This is a pattern called Peanut Butter Pinwheels that I won earlier this year.  I've been using blues in my leaders and enders quilt, but two 2.5" squares doesn't make much of a dent.  So I'm grabbing all the cuts that are less than a fat eighth and cutting them into the squares for this.  The blocks are nice and simple and it's relaxing to sew them together.

Next, a Plaid-ish quilt.  I missed the quilt-along for this one, but when I saw people posting thier finished tops on Instagram I was instantly smitten.  I decided to make mine in Ruby Star fabrics - over half of one of those boxes in the picture above is all Ruby Star/original Cotton + Steel prints and it's time to let them shine!

Then I decided to see what I could do with projects that were already in progress.  My Pandamonium quilt needed a fun binding, so I pulled out some fats in the four accent colors in the quilt - red, teal, pink, and yellow - and cut off a single binding strip from each.  Each corner is a different color, no seams are too close to a corner, and each color is in there three times.  Worth the effort!

Finally, I turned my eye to the problematic blacks in my stash.  The blacks that seem to have too much white in them so they don't work well when I want a "black" fabric but they have too much black in them when I'm looking for a low volume fabric.  I decided to experiment with the yellow Sunshine bee blocks I made and received earlier this year and use them as sashing to give the whole thing a bumblebee effect.  It was a risk, but I'm happy with how the final top looks!

And there you go!  Two quilts started, one finished, one ready to be quilted, and lots of fabric moved around and out!  The Pandamonium quilt finish and the Sunshine quilt top were my June quilt goal, and I'm linking up my successful finish of them over at Elm Street Quilts.