Blue Coin - A "Free" Leaders and Enders Quilt

I enjoyed my finished Blue Four Patch quilt so much that I wanted to start another leaders-and-enders quilt immediately after finishing it.  My blue scrap drawer was still overflowing (and to be honest, probably will be forever because it's my favorite color) so I knew the next project would feature blue as well.  I decided to pair the blue scraps with my also overflowing white scrap drawer to create a coin quilt.  A coin quilt is something that has been on my quilty bucket list for a long time, but felt kind of boring to make as my "featured project", which means it was perfect for some background sewing!

For me, a scrappy quilt works better if there are a couple of rules when I'm piecing it together.  Because I wanted something that I could finish in less than seven years, I needed more lax rules that I had in my previous leaders-and-enders quilt so I settled on four:

1. Only use blues that read as blue - avoid lots of white or more of a teal shade.
2. Anything goes for the low volume rectangles.  I wanted to use up as many of the smaller scraps as I could.
3. Each 4 rectangle strip and 8 rectangle block doesn't contain duplicates of the same fabric.
4. During final assembly, no fabric should touch itself diagonally.  There was no limit on the number of rectangles of each color in the quilt because my main goal was to use up the scraps fully.

This quilt was 100% a free quilt in both fabric and time.  All of the rectangles were cut from scraps in my stash and all of the sewing was done as leaders and enders between pieces of other projects I was working on.  When I started sewing, I didn't have all my rectangles cut.  I would batch cut a bunch of them, then add more when I was running out or needed more variety.  Here is my method that allowed me to sew the batched scraps but not have them bunched up in any one part of the quilt when I sewed all the blocks together:

Finishing the quilt was simple - I ditch-stitched all the seams with a light blue thread and then bound it with the leftover backing fabric.  I've done this a few times now and I really like the effect (plus it has fewer seams and reduces the amount of leftover scraps from the project).  The backing fabric was the only thing I purchased specifically for this quilt.

Thanks for stopping by!  Here's a link to download the scrappy blue coin instructions for free if you'd like them in a PDF format and I'll leave you with a funny picture of me plus the quilt plus the wind.