Burgoyne Surrounded by Neutrals

Most of my sewing time in August was wrapped up in completing a Sew Along, so I didn't spend much time playing with neutral scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

However, I really wanted to see if I could make a Burgoyne Surrounded block using neutral scraps.

I don't know if this block will fit in with all the rainbow-colored Burgoyne Surrounded blocks, but I'm sure happy with how it turned out!

I made five additional Pinwheel blocks for my collection.

That brings my total of neutral Pinwheel blocks to fifteen.  It's almost time to make a quilt from these three-inch blocks!

A few weeks ago, I shared a picture of a quilt made by Alex Anderson using neutral fabrics.  I've admired that quilt for years, and thought about trying to make it just by studying the picture (there's no pattern in the book featuring the quilt).  Thanks to some Google-searching, I discovered the quilt pattern is included in a "vintage" Alex Anderson book.

There are several fun quilts in here, but I'm all about the Stars and Pinwheels quilt (Alex is resting her arm on it in the book cover shot).  I won't be starting the quilt any time soon, but it's definitely on my Bucket List!

All good neutrals must come to an end.  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for September is orange.  Here's just a sample of some orange scrappy strips that will get made into Pinwheel blocks and Four-Patch blocks.

If you love orange, there's more scrappy inspiration at Angela's Soscrappy blog.

Is it Low Volume or Neutral?

This month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge is to work with neutral value scraps.  Or is that low volume scraps?  Whatever you call them, they can add contrast to a quilt block or be used on their own for a muted, textural quilt.

Case in point:  a quilt in all neutral value fabrics by Alex Anderson (from Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!! The Complete Guide to Quiltmaking by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes).  I love the soft texture created by the use of white and off-white in this quilt.  

The bad thing about neutral value quilts is they are very difficult to photograph!  This quilt was the result of a challenge among members of the Treadle On email list - a group of vintage and antique sewing machine enthusiasts.  

The challenge was to figure out how to use one or more of the antique attachments for our machines.  Inspired by Colette Wolff's book The Art of Manipulating Fabric, we used unbleached muslin for our challenge blocks.  Many participants created textured blocks inspired by techniques described in the book.

I set the blocks together using a variety of off-white print fabrics.  The fleur-de-lis block in the upper right corner is mine - I made it using ribbon and the under-braider attachment.

So today, as I made some Pinwheel blocks for the RSC, I couldn't help but think about making another low volume/neutral quilt!

For more neutral scrappy inspiration, check out the other RSC participants at Angela's SoScrappy blog.