By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador

My current project is a sampler quilt called Halloween Figs from Joanna Figueroa at Fig Tree & Co. I’m making mine more scrappy than the original, which means there’s a new decision at every turn.

Yesterday I came to the point I always reach in a scrap quilt, when I realize I may have run completely off the rails. I was working on a block called Bear Paw Star.

This is how the block is colored in Joanna’s quilt, but I made mine scrappy instead.

But because I hadn’t used the same fabric or even the same value in each quadrant, I had lost much of the block’s appeal. I decided to play around in EQ8 quilt design software from The Electric Quilt Company.

I intensified the colors and I liked that effect, above.

Then I made just the bear’s toes a different color from the rest of the paw. I liked that too.

I tried making each quadrant scrappy but I maintained orange or dark taupe in each quadrant, above.

One of the features I love in EQ is that you can remove the narrow black lines between the patches if you want a more realistic perspective. Above, the lines have been removed. Here is it again with the lines showing. Do you see the difference?

Then just for kicks, I went totally scrappy in EQ, so that the mockup looked like my actual block.

I think my scrappy block would look fine in the overall quilt because there will be so much going on. But I know it would be a little bit better if I remade it and kept the quadrants distinct.

And that’s just what I did.

If you don’t have quilt design software, you can do this with real fabric on a design wall or flannel board. Or you can play around with crayons or colored pencils on graph paper. But it’s definitely worth the time to see what your options are when you decide to go scrappy.

Great scrap quilts don’t just happen by throwing everything together. It takes deliberation, patience and practice. You’ll get better as you go along!

And when you make a block that doesn’t quite work, as I did, you can chalk it up to a learning experience and happily move on with your work.

Quilt on,

Diane