Quilt Ideas for Trick or Treat

I love small quilts!

Small quilts don’t take up a lot of time or space. They quickly satisfy my need to create. They’re fun to use in my home as the seasons come and go. And they make great gifts. What’s not to love?!

I have been making small quilts ever since I started quilting in 1984. That’s 35 years. I have saved most of them, and they became my first trunk show for quilt guilds: One Hundred Small Quilts.

Last week I shared a free pattern for a Halloween candy block called Trick or Treat. Today I want to share some ideas for how you can use the blocks in a project.

For the least amount of work, make two blocks and cut one plain patch 6-1/2″ square. Set with scrappy gray triangles. (Would you like to know how to figure the size of those triangles? I’ll make that my next post.)

Or make three blocks as shown above. The orange border finishes at 1/2″ and the black outer border finishes at 1-1/4″. Rotate the middle block or the two outer blocks for variety!

Make just four blocks and rotate them into a circle as shown above. Add borders.

Or make nine blocks in scrappy oranges, grays and blacks and orient them all in the same direction. Here I added borders and then a binding in charcoal.

One of the keys to a great scrap quilt is to remember that it’s not like getting dressed. When you’re dressing, you usually want your colors to match. When you’re making a quilt, you want them to clash! It’s better to use nine different shades of orange than to use just one. Same with the grays—I used blue-gray, tan-gray, light gray and dark gray together for more interest.

And do you see the borders in this virtual quilt? Four borders are four opportunities to use a new fabric. All the borders don’t have to match. Variety creates interest.

This is what happens if you rotate every other block, above. More interest!

For this example, I made 15 scrappy blocks and topped them off with a black cat. How much fun is that?!

I design in EQ8 quilt design software from The Electric Quilt Company. It’s easy to learn and it can do nearly anything (its only limitation is that it doesn’t make dinner).