Easy I-Spy Scrap Quilt

It's been a long time since I posted something new here, and this twin bed quilt seems like a good project to share.  I had been saving fabrics to make an I spy quilt for my son, and when we ordered his first twin mattress, I needed to make a twin bed quilt quick.  I didn't want to just sew square after plain square of random novelty fabrics; I wanted to do something to unify the quilt.  I am very happy with how this turned out, and I think the primary colored frames around the different I-spy prints work well to unify both the fabrics and the random collection of colorful toys that often litter my son's room!  I looked online a few times and couldn't find a design for an I spy quilt like this, but I finally found something on google images that inspired me.  That was this quilt, at Don't Call Me Betsy, which was the very first quilt she ever made!  It's an easy idea and I decided to use it in order to both unify and speed along the construction of my bed sized quilt, which I needed to sew quickly!

I finished this quilt so quickly that it was done before hubby has even started building the bed!

I used 6 inch squares for the block centers and 3 inch strips to frame them, and then trimmed each block to 11 inches square.  My son chose many of his I-spy fabrics, and some were such large prints that I used a few 11 inch square blocks without borders.  He was insistent about that Thomas the Tank Engine fabric, and this one didn't work well in 6 inch squares.  I used scrap and stash fabrics in primary colors to make the "frames," although for a few squares I used strips of the novelty I spy fabrics, when the print was small enough.

I used 2 of each fabric so he can also look for matches, as he likes matching games a lot right now.  To make this twin quilt takes 35 blocks, in 7 rows of 5, so you need 2 each of 17 different fabrics, one of which you will use 3 times.  To make this quilt harmonious, I stuck with a palette of mostly primary colors in the prints, and enhanced this by using reds, blues, and greens for the framing strips.

This is an easy, quick, I-spy quilt to sew that uses scraps but has a coherent quality that brings the diverse prints together in a fun way.

I am feeling quite quilt-y lately; I just finished a new top which I will quilt soon and I have a lot of quilt ideas swirling in my head, so I hope to make more posts again here soon.  I hope you and yours enjoy a beautiful day today and that you all have a beautiful tomorrow, too!  Happy Sewing!