sewing the scraps

Today I'm sharing an almost finished quilt top! The traditional St. Louis 16 Patch block is simply four rows of four patches. This block is normally pieced using a checkerboard layout, alternating between two fabrics. I found a couple of excellent tutorials here and this one here which, interestingly, has a couple of all-one-collection examples, using those treasured fat 1/4 bundles!

But it's a great scrap buster too! 
So I grabbed my longish strips of blue Kaffe fabric, some off cuts from older fat 1/4's, and leftover bits of bindings, along with a pile of already cut 3 1/2" squares that I was going to use for something but never did, and I started sewing the scraps! Why blue? it was simply the colour I had the most scraps of.
I began by pairing up two prints, one light & one medium/light and I tried to get a mixture of large & small scale patterns for each pair. But it was not quite as 'random' as you might think! I thought I'd share a few other things I found along the way that helped get a sense of balance happening with this quilt top. 

I found substituting a fabric was necessary when I ran out of something, 

and it seemed to help a little with the flow from block to block...

there were, of course, some blocks that were 'prettier' than others...

and I also found by accident, that some of the darker blocks were still ok to include! 

They added interest, and equally importantly, let the softer, lighter blocks shine... 

and then some blocks really, truly just needed to be more neutral/boring! 

{Who'd have thought that Kaffe Paperweight in 'Sludge' could have been as useful as that!} 

I like it... it sort of looks soft & ethereal in this light! 

At the moment, I've made 30 blocks 

I'm going to leave it sitting on the spare bed for a few days 

just while I look at it & maybe move things around a bit... I'm sure Olive will help too! 
For a few more details see earlier post here

maybe pop back in a few days to see the whole quilt! 

Linking up with needle-and-thread-thursday here