This quilt is destined for our front room, supposedly a lounge for my teens to entertain their friends. It has everything teens expect a tv, games station and computer but for some reason they prefer the family lounge. In an effort to make it more homely I’m hoping this quilt will do the trick.

My lovely mum who just turned 90 was up with us and offered to do some sewing. I don’t think she is any more enamoured with my Pfaff than she was when she sewed with it on her summer visit.

I settled on a coin quilt using as many blue/grey fabrics I could muster with one condition – they all had to come from my scraps. In a recent sort out of my sewing room I was quite shocked at how my scraps had multiplied. This was despite efforts to use them and give away a fair bit. I needed to get serious with scraps.

This quilt design was perfect. Many of my scraps are in strips and I just dug out all the blues and greys scraps I possess that were at least 8 inches long and put them through the accuquilt.

I ended up with a pile of 1 1/2” and 2 1/2” strips. It was just a question of joining them together firstly in pairs and then in longer blocks. I think I must have got carried away as we have a whole lot left…..

It is meant to be ‘covering a person comfortably whilst prone on settee’ size so we settled for 60” by 70” so a bit more than a typical throw.

‘Do you know she still hasn’t done the hems on the curtains and the first set went up in March!’

It’s backed in a warm cosy dark blue flannel called Woolies Flannel from Sew and So in Suffolk. I’ve used this before and it washes well and doesn’t lose its softness.  It is the same make but different colourway of my ‘disaster’ so why come back for more punishment? I suppose I just like the extra weight of flannel and the sense of cosiness. I’ve learnt how to mitigate the risk  and with this quilt compared to the disaster quilt it has a dark blue background on the quilt front and not cream and even the main colours are blue to start with. Of course it would have been a good idea to pre wash it …..

On the scrap front I have until recently kept all the smaller scraps in jars on the window ledge. Whilst colourful they ended up very wrinkled and it was always difficult to find the correct size scrap without upending the jar and then having to cram everything back in.

I’d seen on Catrin’s (@patshyncatrin) IG feed a multi drawer mini filing cabinet. It struck me it would be perfect for scraps and courtesy of Ebay it was with me 24 hours later. So I emptied those scraps jars one last time and had this huge mound. I wasn’t entirely sure they’d fit in.

But in fact once ironed and after a bit of judicious cutting out of thin spindly bits they fitted a treat. I couldn’t resist colour coding those dinky label windows on each drawer front. A very satisfying task.

And those jars? I put them to good use holding zips carefully sorting them by length and putting a discreet label on the back. The cats then decided it was the greatest fun to try and remove these labels. I sometimes feel they really want me to give up sewing!

Linking up with Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilt, Kelly of My Quilt Infatuation and Amanda jean of Crazy Mom Quilts