Crabcakes, Anyone?

I got a wee bit snarky in guild today when one of our members felt the need to educate us in the fine art of making scrappy quilts. Her quilt was based on a "layer cake" of 10" squares from a single fabric line.

I do buy pre-cuts (jelly rolls, charm square packs, etc.) and sometimes use them as the starting point for a quilt, but I don't enjoy restricting myself to a single fabric line. They're just too "matchy-matchy" for me. If one green is good, 12 are better (and 50 are better yet!), especially when the choices expand the range of green into olive, blue-green or anything just a bit different. That doesn't happen in most fabric lines so I add my own goodies to get the color range I want.

Which begs the question: is a quilt made from a single jelly roll/charm square pack/layer cake truly scrappy? Pre-cuts do provide a bit more variety than is typical in a lot of patterns since they mix up the colors and prints. But are they successful? The honey bun I used in the little quilt below had about 10 different prints/solids, but without a few additions, it felt boring. So maybe the answer is that a layer cake quilt is indeed scrappy, but could have been made so much more interesting with a few strategic additions.


And that's what I think. I feel better, no more Mrs. Crabcakes for me today! :-)