This Rectangle Wrangle quilt started as a group project when my friends, Barb and Deb, came over from Minnesota for a sewing week last summer. I’m sure both of them finished their quilts months ago while I still had a stack of blocks. The inspiration for this quilt is from Bonnie K. Hunter’s book Scraps and Shirttails II (available from Bonnie here or Amazon here.
As you can see from the picture, the original quilt has an Ohio Star border. I find it distracting from the quilt center so my quilt has a simple slab border. The original quilt is also made from thrifted men’s shirts, but I just can’t go there. I have a basement full of fabric and don’t need the extra hassle of cutting apart shirts for fabric. My quilt is also smaller because it is for donation. Most places that take donations ask for twin size, not queen, so that is mostly what I make.
Of course, I did not follow the piecing directions in which you sew strip sets, make tubes, then un-sew a seam to get the chain effect. After timing that method against cutting individual rectangles, I found that cutting the rectangles is quite a bit faster, especially since I use the Shape Cut ruler to cut. This was a little bit of a surprise, but I am all about efficiency in my quilting.
For years, I have cut 2-1/2″ strips of fabric from scraps and have tons of strips. They are convenient for quilts like this because I did not have to do a lot of cutting to get started. I pretty much just used strips as I pulled them out of the bin. Not much thought went into color placement or whether or not a fabric coordinated with the others. Anything and everything was used in this quilt. As you can see, Rectangle Wrangle is a very forgiving pattern because it all seemed to work and I am very happy with the way it turned out. It is so fun to revisit all these old fabrics and even better to clear a little space in the strip bin!
The quilting is a pantography by Willow Leaf Studios called Soap Flakes. This design quilts up quickly and adds nice texture to the quilt.
The backing is a homespun plaid from my stash.
I am so happy to finish another quilt this week. It was a fun quilt for the three of us to piece together. It is a simple design and we were able to talk and laugh as we sewed. Rectangle Wrangle is such an easy quilt and great scrap buster that I will probably make another one!
