Yee-Haw!

I'm kicking up my heels because I can finally spill the beans...;o)

 I've got a little secret sewing to share with you.  A secret that I kept for over a year because I had the honour of being a pattern tester for a lovely, talented friend.  The pattern I tested may not look familiar to you in this setting...

but maybe you will recognize this.

You know you want a copy... click here.

That's right, lucky ole me, got to test  Amanda Jean's

 quilt pattern, Candy Coated,  which is on the cover of

Sunday Morning Quilts, the book she wrote with Cheryl!  My version doesn't look very Candy Coated though... so I'm calling it

 Anything Plaid.

  Funny story about how my version ended up being in plaid...  I had just finished sewing a hexagon plaid quilt for my son and after all the matching of lines it required, I was literally tired of plaid.  I think I actually whined a bit about it to Amanda Jean. ;o)  She patiently listened to my complaints and asked what I had lined up next to work on.  I said, "Anything, but plaid!".  ha ha... Little did I know what would transpire next and that I would be eating those words.

An email or two later, Amanda Jean asked if I could test a pattern for her.  Yes, oh yes! Count me in.  She sent me a gorgeous scrappy quilt pattern to test.  I knew immediately that this design would shine if I used an abundant selection of scraps.  The more the merrier!  That's when it hit me. What scraps did I have enough of to make this quilt?   Um, yes,  that  would be plaid.   Hmmm... so much for sewing something NOT plaid. LOL

 It actually seemed like  it was serendipity because I now had THE perfect pattern for using up not only leftovers from the two previous plaid quilts (click here and here), BUT... more importantly, I would be able to finally use up a bag of varying size scrappy strips I had bought at a garage sale a few years back.  Those scraps ranged in width from 1" to 4" and the lengths started at 3.5" and went up to 20".  It was a real hodge podge of sizes and a potpourri of colours!  I used some of those scraps to make this bag, but I still had a ton of them left to work with.  I knew that these scraps would be magic combined with her pattern.  It was meant to be. lol

Later, when asked what fabrics I had chosen for making her design, Amanda Jean said she had a good laugh when I wrote PLAID.

 It was a the perfect choice for Amanda Jean's design!  I ended up using more than 40 fabrics in some rows - with no repeats.  The amount of cutting needed was greatly reduced, there was little waste and that bag of scraps became a one of a kind quilt.  Can't beat that!

 The quilt went together very quickly, thanks to Amanda's clear instructions (okay, it also helped to have all those pre-cut scraps to work with... ;o).

  The only change I made was to increase the width of the quilt as my son likes quilts that hang further down the sides of the bed and it allowed me to use up more of those scraps.  When it came time to quilt, I knew exactly what I wanted to do - free motion concentric circles.

  I thought mixing up the sizes of the circles would be even more fun, so I got out my mixing bowls to use as templates and chalked around their outlines.  This allowed me to randomly place the different size circles  over the quilt top and gave me good guidelines for the quilting.   I found it a bit tricky to quilt this design initially, but after some stitch ripping, I soon got it worked out.  It was totally worth the initial struggles because I love the texture it added!

Love all scrappy plaids!

Look at the opportunity to use scraps that this clever design provides!  The more you mix up the widths of the strips (or make some wonky for added interest as I did in different rows) the more interesting this design looks.

Many thanks to Amanda Jean for her great design! 

I'm  also going to say how much I appreciate that she didn't reply, "Oh, no.  Not ANOTHER plaid quilt." when I told her what I chose to test her pattern with. LOL    I hope in the year that's transpired since those two plaid quilts in a row, that she recognizes that my quilts aren't limited to plaids. hee hee

Looking at these photos has me thinking, I'm  ready for another scrappy quilt! Time to grab a copy of Sunday Morning Quilts.   I bet I can make one of her other scrappy designs in anything but plaid. ;o)  Yee-Haw!