Quilted Scraps (Part II): Three Cards from One Experiment

Last week, I experimented with quilt-inspired ways to use some of my patterned-paper scraps. What began as one idea ended up leaving me with several pieces to play with.

In Part I, I shared quilt-themed features made with little squares of patterned paper. Today, I'm sharing quilted panels made simply by overlapping patterned strips.

A couple of sketch challenges provided the perfect excuse to create cards with those pieces, and before long I had three cards from the same little family of scraps.

Card One

This quilted panel was made by overlapping strips of patterned paper. 

The original panel was wider than you see here, but I found that the quilt effect became a little lost across the larger area, so I trimmed it down to create a narrower feature.

When I saw this week's Atlantic Sketch Challenge, with its patterned background strip and floral centre, I knew this panel would be a perfect fit.

I pulled out the roses from Stampin' Up!'s Petal Palette stamp set and liked the way the thicker line art worked with the busy patterned background. Rather than colouring them with ink, I stamped the roses onto scraps of the Tranquil Tide and Blushing Bride cardstock tones I'd already used in the quilted panel, then fussy cut them and glued them into place.

I added a piece of vellum behind the roses to soften the pattern underneath without completely hiding it. It gives the flowers a little more room to stand out while still letting the quilted background show through.

Card Two

As I mentioned, the original quilted panel was too wide for the effect I wanted, so I trimmed it down. That left me with two strips of mixed patterned paper, made up of those same diagonally cut pieces.

When I saw the Freshly Made Sketches challenge, with its three circles as the central feature, I immediately thought of those leftover strips.

The rose stamp was still sitting on my desk from the first card, and its little spray of three roses was almost perfect for this sketch's three circle feature. I used the same scrap-paper colouring technique again, this time choosing yellow cardstock for the flowers instead of pink.

This card turned into a bit of an unexpected scrap experiment of its own. I was trying different cardstock offcuts to decide what colour to use for the background when I noticed how much I liked the effect of using two different colours above and below the central strips.

It made me wonder how much fun it could be to deliberately build a background from mismatched pieces of cardstock. Another scrap idea for the list!

Card Three

I still wasn't quite finished with the original quilted-strip idea.

Although I liked the narrower panel I'd used for the first card, I wanted to see if I could make a wider version that still had that lovely quilted effect. So I went back to the patterned strips and experimented with varying their placement.

This version needed a little more manual trimming to make the pieces fit together, but I was really happy with the result. The different strips created a gorgeous diamond pattern through the centre of the panel.

Just as I did in Part I of this experiment, I decided to step it up with a little texture and ran the finished panel through the Tasteful Textile embossing folder.

For this card, I also embraced the cosy quilt feeling with a cup of tea and a Take Care of Yourself sentiment.

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I love that this little experiment kept giving me things to play with. And that's one of my favourite things about working with scraps. You don't always have to know what something is going to become. Sometimes you can just make the pieces, put the leftovers aside, and wait for the right idea to come along.

Love creating with scraps?

Discover Cardmaking with Scraps – Issue 1, featuring 8 scrap-friendly card projects designed to help you make the most of the pieces already in your stash.