There’s something intriguing about working with someone else’s scraps in a project. What leftover fabric treasures do they have? What are their color and fabric print choices? Are they different or similar to what’s in my stash? How do they add spice to the scraps I already have?
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| Improv patchwork with new and old scraps. |
With my Make Nine 2025 complete, I’ve come back to making improv patchwork and diving into the scrap piles… for kitty quilts and charity quilts… to scratch my fabric patchwork itch.
Inspiration came from the new scraps
Even though I have my own [healthy] collection of scraps, I picked up a couple of scrap bags at The Cherry Pit quilt shop a few weeks ago. Ooooh, baby! It’s like getting new crayons for your 120-color crayon box! Among the newly-acquired scraps were a few orphan quilt blocks, and pieced cut-offs. So I decided that these would be the impetus of the first scrappy kitty quilt top—including the color palette.
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| Strip pieced blocks and triangle units found in the scrap bag. Additional fabrics were added to complete the unfinished blocks. |
My improv process
Starting with the pieced units and adding triangle shapes to the partial units, I gathered other scraps to add to the “Autumn” color palette. A few scraps of bright pink and red violet pushed the red part of the color palette… but that’s because those scraps happen to be on the top of the pile. That’s how the improv process rolls for me.
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| Auditioning scraps for the autumn color palette. |
These scraps were laid out in a way as if putting together a puzzle. No two pieces are alike… a pumpkin print might land next to a batik or a contemporary print might sit comfortably beside a vintage-looking shirting. I don’t worry too much about matching—just let the scraps and shapes find their own places in the improv ensemble. I find that’s the fun of it.
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| Finished quilt top. Approximately 28” x 25”. |
The finished kitty quilt top is playful, freeing, and full of surprises—a lively mix of prints and textures, stitched from the leftover bits from other projects. I intentionally added a few blue fabrics because of the navy print that was already pieced into two of the orphan blocks. And the 45-degree angles of the pieced blocks were intentionally set in different directions to keep the eye moving around the quilt.
As in life, you never quite know what you’ll get in a bag of scraps. But scraps are a reminder that even the most humble pieces—or the most unexpected, wild prints—can be brought together with care and creativity to become something beautiful and useful. Everything will find a place.
