Barb,

Love your scrappy quilts, especially the string quilt.

Your pineapple quilt is gorgeous!

I made a Christian's cross...it's a double irish chain with a cross in the blank squares. Turned out great!

I love Bonnie Hunter's site and have done quite a few but I think the easiest one is the Crayon box, it makes lovely Project Linus quilts like this one.

Patchsamkim...love that pattern! Printed it out and subscribed to their newletter, too. Thanks to everyone who has responded~

I have never made a true scrappy quilt. I know, it sounds horrible. But I haven't. I always have fabric lines that I work with. And to me, that's not a scrappy quilt. I think a scrappy quilt is everything thrown in. I would really like to try one. I have two doctor bags full of scraps plus 5 draws full of scraps. I just get overwhelmed when I look at all that fabric. How do I choose what fabric to use? There's so many, many pieces, large and small. Half yards, yards, FQ, little pieces, strips, squares, etc. I wouldn't know where to start, so I haven't. I guess I could get a couple of laundry baskets out and dump all the fabric in those and mix it up and grab from it. But...first I have to find a pattern. Now I need a pattern. Where does it end?

jcrow what always works best for me in my ongoing battle to tame the scraps is to have a specific pattern in mind, then go through the scrap mountain and pull pieces that will work for that quilt. They get ironed, trimmed to the appropriate size, then if there's anything left over, it gets put neatly away. That's half my problem, I have to constantly work to clean up after myself and put things away after I've used them. It does NOT come naturally to me.

Right now I am cutting for two different scrappy quilts, one called Flock of Geese Medallion from the "American Country Scrap Quilts" book by Fons & Porter, and a super scrappy Scrappy Trip Around the World from Bonnie Hunter's site. The Flock of Geese Medallion uses 2 inch and 3.5 inch half square triangles, so if I have a scrap that I can get a 3.5 inch or 4.5 inch square, and if it's in "country" colors, it goes into that quilt. The super scrappy Trip Around the World uses 2 inch squares -- individual squares as opposed to strips, which is how it's normally constructed. So I can use one solitary 2 inch square in a block. Each block uses 36 squares and so far I'm averaging a minimum of 15 different fabrics per block. I'm going to need over 5,000 squares for that one so, yeah, I'm gonna be working on this one for a while ... but it lets me play with the fabric and the different color combinations, which is my favorite part of quilting.

I encourage you to browse the online patterns for an hour or so (do you belong to Pinterest?) grab your rotary cutter and attack that Scrap Mountain. Remember, if you don't like the quilt top when you're done, it can always be donated to a good cause. People who have lose everything (or never had it to lose in the first place) aren't going to care if the quilt is a Great Work of Art, they just know it's something to keep them warm that somebody cared enough to make for them. I've made many string quilts and 9-patch quilts to keep my scrap bins from totally overwhelming my sewing space and have donated many, many quilts to charity through the years.

Jeanne, ladynredd gave you some great advice. I would just add this: Go to Bonnie Hunter's website (www.quiltville.com) and on the right side she has a bunch of free patterns listed. Find one you like and only cut up some scraps in the size that you will need. Some of her patterns only require one size like 2.5 inch strips and squares. The first one I did was Bricks and Stepping Stones. It required 3.5 x 6.5 bricks (any color), and 2 inch black and neutral strips for 4-patches. I had to buy some black and used it as a constant. However, I had lots of shirting FQs and simply cut some 2" strips from them. Some of them I had for YEARS - what was I saving them for? It was VERY liberating cutting up my scraps and FQs. Don't worry about attacking all of your scraps at once.

If you like the process, you will start cutting more scraps as you go. It's like getting another stash.
:-)