The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Or perhaps this ought to read : "The Bad, the Ugly and the Uglier"

Lisa has shown us that we can basically take rags & make riches. Take your ugly leftover scraps in any and every color and piece them together into the most lovely scrap quilt. This is the Jacob's Ladder pattern, which is very simple and works well for those pesky leftovers.



I, like so many other quilters, have TONS of scraps. Many were given to me from other quilters so you know that they are the least wanted pieces of ugly material around. I have taken the challenge to see if I can create something equally as pretty. OK, I'll just settle for nice & usable. This will likely be a Project Linus giveaway this year. Lisa's is (in her defense) done in mostly shades of pink, blue & green, whereas my quilt uses all colors.

Here's what I did...


- cut LOTS of 2.5" strips of whatever length you have of all colors
- separate into light and dark, pairing a light with a dark
- sew strips together, press, and rotary cut to 2.5" x 4.5" light-dark pieces
- randomly piece 2 light-dark rectangles together to get 4.5" 4-patch squares of light & dark (piece A) - need 60 of these for my quilt


- cut 4.875" squares - need 30 light and 30 dark
- pair one light and dark together, mark diagonal line, and sew 0.25" on either side of line. This makes 2 half-square triangles that are light-dark. Cut on line and press. Piece B - There need to be 60 of these (should be 4.5" half-squares)


- Piece parts A & B into 4-patch squares. There will be 30 of these.
- Pray that it looks good now...
dontcha just love my assortment of UGLY fabrics?? I have everything from apples to batiks to stripes and dots and checks, to hearts, flowers, ocean squid and my personal favorite, the cow! Hopefully this quilt will in fact weed out some of my uglier scraps.