Plaid-ish Scrap Quilt (and Tutorial)

I have mentioned it before, but I am making a real effort this year to burn through some of my scraps. So far I have made 4 scrap quilts (see here, here, here, and here), but there are still so many scraps in my bin.


There were a large number of long, skinny strips and leftover charm squares and I wanted to make a quilt that used as many of them as possible. After playing around with a few ideas, I decided to give a plaid-inspired design a try.




In order to make the plaid look show through, I used a mixture of blocks that play with value. It is a particularly good way to use scraps because pretty much any color can work in the quilt. This pattern uses tiny squares, skinny strips, rectangles, and (charm size) squares.


Since I had so much fun making this quilt, I knew that I wanted to write up a tutorial. It is available (for free) in my shop and it is also available in my story highlights on Instagram. Even if you aren't normally an Instagram fan, I would suggest checking them out because I do a little more explaining in the videos and I am also going to be posting responses to any questions that I get about the tutorial.

Even though I wrote this quilt with scraps in mind, it also works well for yardage and I think it would be a lot of fun in solids.


I used 90" wide minky to back my quilt. It is the first time I have used it and it was fantastic! In the past, I have only used minky on smaller quilts because I didn't want to piece it for the backing, but the 90" version solves that problem and I had no issues with it while quilting on my home machine.



If you plan to make this pattern, I do have a few suggestions for you to help make the plaid-effect noticeable.

• Make you are using the darkest dark value fabrics, the lightest light value fabrics, and the medium-est medium value fabrics. There is a whole spectrum of value and you don't want darks that are too light or lights that are too dark. That being said, I was not strict about this with my quilt because I was more interested in just using what I had.
• Use the black and white photo mode on your phone to help distinguish value. Sometimes it can be tricky to see! 
• Busier prints are a little risky to use here - obviously I used them, but they tend to have a mix of values.
• If you are going to shrink (or expand) the size of the quilt by adding or subtracting blocks, use the coloring sheet to help you plan.