Barrett Quilt - the Scrappy Black + Blue one

March 6, 2026

Today I am sharing one of my top five favorite quilts I've EVER made. This one really ranks so high up, out of hundreds of quilts, this one is elite.

Before we dive into this scrappy quilt, let's catch up. We released the Barrett Quilt Pattern in December of 2025 and we made five samples during the launch. So far we have an introduction blogpost to the design and three other samples finished on the blog.

As a refresher, the Barrett pattern can be made in a 5 color option or a 2 color option. And within each design, you can choose to use yardage or scraps for each part. This scrappy Black + Blue quilt uses the 5 color option.

We have made several scrappy versions of the Barrett quilt (Green and Peach) but this one is 100% all scraps. No yardage anywhere in this quilt. Even Fabric E - the outer border is made from scraps.

This was the original mock up idea I created to play with an all black and blue quilt. Originally the border was going to be a bright blue color but as I made my way through my stash/scraps, I realized I didn't have enough fabrics to make this palette read 100% the same as the mock up. So I let the fabric direct me.

I first separated my fabric into two color ways. All the blacks are Fabric B and Fabrics A, C, D, and E are all the blues. I did this so I could make sure the overall gradient in the blues made sense.

Technically this is how the colors will be separated. The blacks and more cobalt blues are the nine patches and snowball blocks. Then the bright blues are the points of the flying geese, then the dusty robin eggs blues are the inside of the geese and finally the lightest minty blues are the border.

I didn't end up using all of these fabrics, some maybe were too bold of a print or just not the right shade of blue but I did love the palette and how all of them interacted from the very beginning.

I started by cutting my fabrics needed for the nine patches and worked on these first.

After my strips were ready, I cut them down into their units and then sewed them back together to finish my nine patches. I love the rhythm of this part of the quilt.

When I am sewing these together, I try not to overthink the pairings. The only thing I do make sure of is that a single 3 piece unit (like you see below) is not repeated within the same block. That's all.

Next up, it was snowball time! This is the most meditative part of the quilt. I batch sew the heck out of this section.

Again I just went with flow of sewing and didn't overthink things. I only tried to not repeat the same black fabric in each snowball.

From here, it was trimming and pressing these and pressing the nine patches I finished earlier.

I put these up on the design wall before I started the next sewing section which was the flying geese. I always love seeing the different parts of a quilt coming together, especially in the middle of a make. It keeps me excited to continue working on it.

I love the small pops of pink and reds here. Just a small nod to another supporting color in a very two color quilt. It's like a wink.

Next up is creating our flying geese border. The flying geese are made from Fabrics C + D which are the brighter blues and dusty blues. We make flying geese four at a time in this pattern and I made sure that the smaller squares (which becomes the points) were different fabrics. I did NOT use one large square and four smaller squares of the same fabric. I made sure all the squares were different fabrics for ultimate scrappy vibes.

The four small squares on the large squares are the corner squares in the final border set up.

I believe this was the end of me photographing my flying geese units before sewing it all together. I think I was too excited to stop and pause to photograph.

It was time to sew my nine patches and snowball together or what I lovingly called "the guts" of the quilt.

Once this section was assembled and pressed, it went back up on the design wall. I laid out the flying geese around the quilt to be sure I liked their placement before sewing the flying geese together to create the the first part of the border.

I attached the flying geese and watched the quilt grow. The last thing I needed to do was decide which fabrics I officially wanted to use for the outside border and cut, sew and attach them.

It may be hard to see but there are two very softly different gradients in our Fabric E fabrics. There are 10 fabrics. The first 5 at the top are more of a true soft light blue. The bottom 5 are more of a soft minty green blue. I decided that starting at the upper left corner of the quilt, I would go around the quilt clockwise from the lightest soft light blue, around towards the darkest and back to the lightest soft minty green blue color. So from the top of the bundle to the bottom, if I labeled the fabrics 1 through 10, then 1 and 10 would start and end the wrap around. Make sense? I hope so.

I cut and sewed the fabrics end to end in one long strip. Then I cut it down into the four needed border cuts. Now I attached the side borders first so cuts 2 & 4 from the long strip. And then I attached top and bottom borders 1 & 3 from the long strip. This kept the color way correct and wrapped the whole quilt in a final gradient of light blues.

I could not love this quilt anymore. Well actually, I know I can. But that's not the point. At this stage of the process I was so overcome with love that I felt so fulfilled with my craft.

I love nothing more than playing with color and mixing solids and prints. Mixing cold and warm fabrics. Mixing scale of design. Mixing all kinds of prints - florals, geometric, animals, stripes, stars, etc. And the variety in depth is astounding. Everything about this palette and fabric pull is what my creative dreams are all about.

You can see all four corners in the above photos and how the fabric gently changes color around the border.

Emily of So Sunny Quilts worked her quilty magic on this beauty. We chose the Wavy Sea pantograph and a periwinkle thread color. We auditioned bright pink and a bright variegated thread which would have been bold and stunning. But, I really wanted to lean harder into the blues and not let the thread take away from the palette.

I backed this quilt in a small carolina gingham in royal blue. And I kept the scrappy gradient theme going for the binding - all very light blues/greys.

I mean the texture is spot on. The waves add the most organic subtle movement that reminds me of clouds or water. The thread doesn't take away but adds another dimension of blue. It makes me so happy.

Here is me moving and grooving and feeling goofy. I always come out of photoshoots with some really unhinged photos of myself but I can't post most of them. ha!

Every single piece of fabric used in this quilt is 100% from my personal stash and scraps. Some fabrics are over 8 years old, and some are brand new. My goal with sewing scrappy with my stash is two fold. 1. For my personal enjoyment. 2. To inspire you to use what you have on hand and/or reference as inspiration for what you could possibly make yourself.