Scrap Cabin: Week 1
let's sew those scraps!
It’s the first day of a fresh new year! 2025 marks a quarter century in our great big, wild world. From cozy corners all over the globe, we quilters will ring in the new year by creating warmth and beauty, one piece of fabric at a time. Thank you for joining me!
This time of year is one of the best for sewing your scraps. There is a sense of creating space, order and vision for the year ahead. Use our project this January to take action on that new-year vibe. It’s an easy-sew, classic quilt with a fancy border that makes your scraps sing.
To find out how to join the Scrap Cabin sew-along, click over to the master sew-along post. It’s a digital pattern, so you can grab it in a flash and sew right along.
Hopefully you already have a copy of the Scrap Cabin quilt pattern and have zeroed in on a palette for your quilt. Still feeling stumped? If you are craving peace this year, make a whole quilt in a restful, analogous palette such as blue and green or whichever two colors you love the very most.
If you want something more dynamic and energizing, go for a multicolor quilt with high contrast clusters. If you just don’t want to decide, follow along with my colors to make a sister quilt to mine!
WEEK 1 GOAL
12 Scrap Cabin blocks
Think of that as 12 Scrap Cabin blocks OR as 3 Scrap Cabin Clusters. A Scrap Cabin Cluster is a group of 4 blocks in the same color scheme. They are arranged with the dark values at center, to create a cool, organic shape.
So, if you have been watching this space then you know that I kind of cheated…. I already sewed my first 12 blocks when I was writing the pattern last year. Oops! I have shared those three clusters already:
blue + orange
magenta + lime
red + green
I really enjoyed exploring each new color combination! I could have easily sewn multiple clusters in the same color, but switching it up was stimulating and fresh.
If you will be repeating colors (for example sewing 2 clusters in the same combo) it is most efficient to sew more of the same colors while you already have those scraps out. So keep that in mind =)
SHARE TO WIN!
This week share a photo of a Scrap Cabin Cluster on Instagram or Substack chat!
Your photo enters you into a giveaway for the Red Sky at Night eBook by Tales of Cloth. Red Sky at Night is a sampler quilt designed for easy progress. The collection of 62 beautiful Machine pieced and EPP blocks focuses on easy, batched construction.
Winner will be announced next week and giveaway is open worldwide.
Two ways to enter!
On Instagram, share your photo with hashtag #ScrapCabinQuilt. Follow @TalesofCloth to be eligible to win.
On Substack (that’s where my blog lives now!), share your photo in the Week 1 Chat.
It has become increasingly difficult on Instagram to see your photos. That’s why I want to experiment with using Substack chat, where your photos won’t be lost to the Instagram algorithm. You can enter in one or both methods.
In mentally preparing for Scrap Cabin, I've been thinking in particular about how we categorize colors. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you sort your scraps into six categories (primaries, secondaries) and so when you pull blues (for example), you pull true blues and blue greens and blue violets...I literally have 16 acrylic bins for my fabrics: three primaries, three secondaries, six tertiaries (plus one each for greys, browns, black/whites, multi-color-no-dominant). So when I pull blues, I pull from the blue bin only. Is this what makes my quilts visually 'flatter' than yours, I wonder? For Scrap Cabin, when I decide (this afternoon, I hope) on my color scheme, I will broaden my definitions of what a given color is...and see what happens.
I cannot do this tutorial at this time...You have captured the essence of a way older quilt that was in my family......it stands out bcuz it had white and light tints and hues in it...whereas most of the way older quilts ( for rural ancestors, Not Baltimore or Album types, I t hink) seem to be made with dark colors...probably becuz the women got over washing clothes all the time! I do have the scraps to make 43 dozen of this quilt and look forward to making something like it in the future. THANKS.. Bonnie