Hi friends,

Today I am sharing another Beads Quilt sample I made and quilted for the Beads pattern release!

Today's quilt is a fan favorite - super scrappy, full of color, and an awesome mix of low volume black and white prints for the background - this is the Rainbow Scrappy Version the Beads Quilt. 

Check out the other Beads Quilt blog posts for inspiration:

• Beads Quilt / Cover Quilt Version
• Beads Quilt / Friendship Bracelet Version
• Beads Quilt / Blue + Green Essex Version
• Beads Quilt / Pink Sugar Baby Version

Get a copy of the beads Pdf pattern here!

The Beads quilt was inspired by a favorite activity between my son Grey and I, making beaded friendship bracelets. This is a fun, modern quilt pattern for advanced beginner to intermediate quilters, or those who enjoy sewing curves. 

The pattern is fat quarter and fat eighth friendly, or scrappy for a really fun look!

The Beads pattern includes coloring sheets, cutting diagrams, full color instructions and some great "how to sew" videos on sewing + trimming up the Diamond and Circle blocks. I will walk you through the process on how to sew your blocks together, so even if you are completely new to sewing curves you will learn a new skill and have fun in the process!

Rainbow Scrappy Quilt Fabric Information 

Since this is a "scrappy" quilt - getting you the most accurate fabric amounts / info is difficult since I grabbed all of the materials from my stash, but I will try my best!

The layout on this particular beads quilt is in an orderly layout so it has a similar feel - but much different than the pattern, due to the amount of fabrics included.

To achieve this look I first gathered a stack of fabrics that had a nice color flow to them (a total of 33 fabrics), arranged them in the order I liked (some were fat quarters, some were leftovers from previous projects). 

Using a design wall (a floor out of the way, or table top) and my throw size layout in front of me, I picked up the first fabric, and cut the shape needed for the first block - continuing this process until the first row was complete. 

To keep a similar flow like the pattern - where you go back a few colors and start the row again, I did the same with the second row. I started with one of the orange shades that was towards the end of the first row and began again, going in order cutting out shapes needed until I reached the end of the second row. I continued this plan, cutting out shapes needed until I reached the end of the last row.

If I got to a place where there wasn't enough of a certain shade, I could omit one particular fabric here and there or change up my starting color order a bit if needed - making this type of layout fun for using up some well loved scraps!

Here is a full list of every fabric used for the Bead / Diamond / Circle blocks:

Fabrics listed below are from the SunPrint 2019 + SunPrint 2021 line by Alison Glass for Andover Fabrics, with some Kona solids by Robert Kaufman to space out the prints a bit. I will list SP19, SP21 or Kona in front of the color used. 

• SP21 Trinket in Green
• Kona Pickle 480
• SP21 Trinklet in Yellow
• SP21 Crochet Yellow
• SP19 Day Dream - Sunshine
• Kona Canary 26
• SP21 Trinket in Orange
• SP21 Crochet Orange
• SP21 Tuesday in Orange
• Kona Flame 323
• Kona Nectarine 496
• SP21 Trinket in Pink
• SP21 Tuesday in Pink
• Kona Candy Pink 1062
• SP19 Day Dream - Admire
• SP21 Crochet Purple
• SP21 Tuesday in Purple
• Kona Tulip 327
• SP19 Day Dream - Dream
• Kona Grapemist 318
• SP21 Trinket in Purple
• Kona Capri 442
• SP19 Day Dream - Lucky
• SP21 Crochet Teal
• SP21 Tuesday in Teal
• SP21 Trinket in Blue
• Kona Ultra Marine 483
• SP19 Day Dream
• Kona Palm 31
• SP19 Day Dream - Clover
• SP21 Crochet Green
• SP21 Tuesday in Green
• Kona Limelight 493

Now can can move on to discussing the background fabrics used:

This one is a bit more complicated because I do not have an accurate list of the fabric names and how much of each - hopefully I can explain what I did and that will help you out. 

I knew that I wanted something low volume, kind of scrappy and mostly white with a black print. I had quite a bit of fabric that would work for this, so I pulled everything out and made a big stack. Some shades were a slight cream color - which was great, it adds a bit more "scrappiness" to the over all look. 

Some fabrics were actual scraps, some were fat quarters and half yard pieces. I decided it would be smart to actually cut the sashing needed first since those are larger pieces and it would be hard later on to get a good mix of fabrics. 

So following the instructions in the pattern for the throw size quilt I cut various strips from a few of the fat quarters (the longest length side) and a few strips from some longer half yard pieces. I connected them all into one long strip and started cutting the length needed, adding more cuts as I went until I had enough scrappy sashing strips for my quilt top. I moved them around to get a flow of fabric I was happy with on the design wall and was ready for the next step - cutting out the background pieces for the individual blocks. 

At this point in the process I still had all of my bead pieces from the rainbow of fabric on my design wall in the layout I was happy with. So, going through the pile of black and white fat quarters and scraps in front of me, I found pieces that were large enough to use my half circle arch template on, pieces large enough for the diamond blocks and placed them on the design wall as I cut them out - this allowed me to get a good spacing on similar background fabrics, and also see which fabrics I should use more or less of. 

Once I was finished with the background fabric for the circle and diamond block it was easy to take the even smaller leftover scraps and cut the background squares needed for the bead blocks. 

Backing Fabric:

For my backing fabric I was hopeful to find something in my stash of yardage and found a fun rainbow print from Joann Fabrics that I purchased a couple of years ago, I do not remember the name of this particular fabric, but I believe it was one of their brands and they usually have a large assortment of rainbow fabrics year round. 

Binding Fabric:

I have a pretty large stash of this Alison Glass black and white text print - some of which made it into the quilt background so I decided it was the perfect choice for a binding material!

Quilting Details

Since this was a really fun and wild quilt top I thought it might be interesting to experiment with some quilting I haven't tried before. It was a combo of my two favorite stitches - a straight line stitch and a curvy stich!

This was not too complicated - but I will say you have to get into a rhythm with the pattern change. The pattern goes: straight line, straight line, curvy line and repeat. 

I used my dual feed foot on my Janome Memory Craft 6700p - and started off with a curvy line.

The settings for the curvy line on my machine:

• Stitch length 3"
• Curve width 9 (the farthest it will go)

I used my guide bar and kept it at a spacing of 3/4" the entire time I swapped between stitches. 

Once I was done with one curvy line, I switched to straight line stitch, my stitch length usually a 2.8 and I quilted two straight lines, with the 3/4" spacing. Always using the guide bar as a guide against the top of the curvy lines before it, and then against the previous straight line. 

The texture turned out SO much fun and I cannot wait to try it again on another fun quilt!

Rainbow Scrappy Images

Below are some photos of the finished quilt - you might see my helper in one of them, my son Grey. 

Beads sew along information

The Beads Quilt Sew Along will begin next week and take place over eight weeks March 16th - May 4th. We will meet up every Wednesday on the blog - and also receive a weekly newsletter to your inbox Wednesday mornings for a quick update. Sign up here for the weekly newsletter - it will have a link to that weeks blog post, giveaway info and tips for the quilt. 

Thanks for reading the blog today! If you are on Pinterest - first let's for sure be friends, click here to link up. Second, here are a couple of pin friendly images for you to save for future reference!

Happy Sewing!

Nicole