Bust Your Scraps in the Most Random of Ways!

Is your scrap pile like mine and starting to take over your sewing room? Well, lets tackle it with some Randomly Generated Quilt Blocks!

First, let’s get ourselves setup. A few things you’ll need:

  1.  Your GO! Cutter and GO! Qube Mix & Match 8" Block. (You can use any size Qube you have, but the 8” is my favorite for this activity!)
  2. The “GO! Qube 8” Block – 72 Block Pattern Booklet” which is available for free on the AccuQuilt website.
  3. A set of Polyhedral Dice.
    What the heck are those you ask? They are multi-sided dice, typically used in table top board games. You will need a 20 sided dice and then either a 10 or 12 sided dice.
  4. Your scraps, sorted into color categories.
    You will want either 10 or 12 categories to correspond with your dice. I’ll be using a 10 sided dice.

Let’s get started.

To start off, pick your favorite 20 block patterns from the book and print them out. If you have the GO! Qube 8" Companion Set-Angles and/or GO! Qube 8" Companion Set-Corners there are additional 144 patterns you can chose from!

Next, number the block patterns from 1 to 20, you’ll be using the 20 sided dice to randomly pick your blocks.

You’ll want to create a quick color chart for yourself to help keep organized, it can look something like this:

It’s time to roll!

First we’re going to roll the 20 sided dice, it lands on 9. For me that’s the GO! Simplicity block. This block requires 4 colors, so I’m going to roll my 10 sided dice 4 times.

First I roll a 1, referencing my color chart, that’s Red / Pink.

I’ll roll again for my second color, that a 7. So my second color is Brown / Tan.

And I’ll keep rolling until I have picked all the colors I need to make this block. If I roll the same number multiple times, that’s ok. I’ve decided to just roll with it (lol, see what I did there), but if you want more variety in your block you can chose to re-roll.

Before I go to my scrap bins, I’ll pull out the dies needed for the block, that will help me estimate how large of scraps I need to be looking for. Luckily for me, this block only uses shape number 5 (the Small Half-Square Triangle).

Now I’ll rummage through the bins to pull out the fabrics for this block. I don’t spend too much time on this, it’s supposed to be random and not necessarily a cohesive look. If I’m rooting around in my Red / Pink bin and find a piece I love, but there isn’t enough for all the Red / Pink in the block that’s ok. I’ll pull out another Red / Pink print to make up the difference. In my opinion, the busier and crazier each block is, the more interesting the final quilt will be.

Now that we have all the fabrics we need, we’ll need to give them a good press (I don’t know about you, but things get pretty wrinkled in my scrap bins). If needed, I’ll also rough-cut the fabric down to size before sending it through the cutter.

Ok, I’m ready to cut out all my pieces for this block.

When it comes to fabric waste, my philosophy is that these are already scrap fabrics, so I am not terribly concerned about any wasted fabric that comes from this project. Most of the small bits (the middle row) will go into my textile recycling bag and larger pieces (bottom row) will find their way back into the scrap bin.

And now that everything’s cut out, I’ll follow the pattern directions to assemble the block.

And there it is!

One great thing about this exercise is that you don’t have to absolutely LOVE each block you make. This is a practice in letting go of some control and just letting yourself be creative. There isn’t a lot of investment as you’re working with fabric you already have, most of which has probably been haunting you from across the room wanting to be turning into something… ANYTHING.

Now you’re probably asking, what am I supposed to do with this random quilt block… Well, the possibilities are really endless. You can set yourself a goal to make a block a day until you have enough to make a lap quilt, or a baby blanket, or use a project die like the GO! Oven Mitt Die to make some funky oven mitts to use in the kitchen or gift to a friend.

Here’s a picture of the first Randomly Generated Quilt I made a few years ago, and to be perfectly honest, after the first row of blocks (8 blocks) I almost gave up on it. I thought it was just too weird, but the more I added to it, the more I loved it. When I present at guilds and show this quilt I often say “it’s so loud, it quiets itself”, which is to mean that there really isn’t one block or fabric that is screaming louder than the rest, so in some kind of quilty magic, it just works.

I hope you give this activity a try, and if you do be sure to tag AccuQuilt and myself (@rosecityoriginals) when you post it so we can see your beautiful work.