Bloggers Quilt Festival - Scrappy - Boxes of Rainbow

(Don't forget to check my other entry (in the Mini category))

If you are new to my blog WELCOME!!
If you are a constant reader, THANKS for your support!! :)

If you are new around here, let me just point you to my main addiction: designing and sharing for free tons of paper piecing patterns :)

As you can see from my header picture I designed patterns for Disney characters, Peanuts and Snoopy, Downton Abbey, Alice in Wonderland but I have many many more (Maleficent, The Simpsons, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Betty Boop, Minions and more)!! Some of them have to be tested, some of there are tested. You can find them just navigating the different tabs or just typing the character name in the search box at the top of the page.

My other love (that you could also appreciate in most of my paper piecing blocks) is SCRAPPY looks!! I love to play with fun prints, mix and match them! So I have a pretty large collection of small scraps, and when I saw this project I had to use it and make it mine.

Boxes of Rainbow - Size 63''x 78''

The original pattern is the Rainbow Starburst quilt by Shanon @ lilabellelane (you can find the pattern here). I love that block! It's super easy, super scrappy, super wonky, super fast... and I did just few blocks at the time... I didn't even know how big the quilt was going to be, or how many blocks I would needed... I just cut 3'' squares and I put them together in blocks of similar colors... and when I had about 15 of them I lay them out in a rainbow order and added corners that "merge" the colors on the two sides.
Then I wanted to add something to calm down the scrappyness of the blocks and I added the white sashing. But I thought simple sashing was too "boring" so I added the shadow box effect (which also made the quilt a good size without adding new blocks!). For the shadow I chose to use a batik because I don't like to work with solids, but any print would have been too crazy for the shadow. The color is the pop of dark red on the back/binding of the quilt so I think it tide up everything together pretty nicely!

Folded and ready to be sent to the lucky recipient :)

This quilt received careful supervision and testing at every step of its construction by a very special helper as you can see below! Help was provided during:

Piecing

Pressing

Making sure the final top has been pieced correctly and the quilt is big enough

Making sure the quilt is good for hiding (left top), cleaning (left bottom) and playing (right)

And last, but not least, making sure that the quilt is super comfy for great naps!

So I hope you like it!
I have to admit that even if the quilt is ready and washed, the label is still missing :)
But I need to design a special label to acknowledge the help of the cute friend so that may take some extra time ;)

(Don't forget to check my other entry (in the Mini category))

Ali's Adventures in Scrapsland

I want to document my progress (and problems) in this interesting adventure of building quilting project with scraps. If you are interested in looking at my progresses, have a look at the page Ali's Adventures in Scrapsland! I will keep posting my different projects there!

What do you do with scraps??

I started very recently my paper-piecing passion but very very quickly I accumulated a big mass of scraps which have the most weird shape or they are so tiny that they cannot be used in classic paper-piecing patterns. Like the one in this picture...

So I looked around on the web for projects that use scraps, but what they usually call "scraps" are pretty large pieces of fabric (with slightly irregular shape) that can be easily put together into "scrappy squares"... but unfortunately my pieces are much smaller and much crazier than the ones needed for those projects! :(

The only project that I found to make a real use of the scraps (and also all left-over threads) is the following (but didn't try it yet, so I don't know if it is as "simple" as it looks :) )



So here I am, looking for your advice! 
Do you have a special project that is suitable for the kind of scraps that I usually have?
If yes, can you share your ideas in the comments below?

P.S. I finally figured it out a way of using them and go from

to the following 10.5'' squares

but I would like to hear if there are other interesting way of using the scraps! :)