Start with a pre-cut pack, charms or a jelly roll are easy to work with. Fan out all the fabrics and get a good look at them. If there is one colorway or design that you don't like, go ahead and set it aside, but don't be too exclusionary-- this is going to be scrappy, after all.
Then, with the fabric line freshly in mind, go through your stash and scrap bins and pull everything you think could work with the pre-cuts-- either based on color or style. The more the merrier. It's fine if you use a little piece that will only make one appearance in the quilt. I give myself a couple of rules: If I add say, more green, I need to add at least 3 more greens, so that it becomes a range of related greens, not just one mis-matched green that shows up and kind of sticks out from the matchy bunch. Also, often there will be one or two prints that incorporate all the colors used in the fabric line -- you can use that to help you find the scope of scraps to pull from you bins. While there might be a lot of read-as-solid-pinks in the fabric line, when you look at the mother-lode print, you may see that a couple of shades of red work too.
Now that you've pulled a tonne of scraps, it's time to do another edit and maybe refine the direction that your project is going-- you might add more of a certain color or delete a whole color family. More than once I realize that I'll be happier splitting this into 2 quilts, say one done in cool colors, the other in warms. Or one done with pastels, the other with more vibrant fabrics. Sometimes I decide to keep everything and add even more variety.
When you like the color/print fabric range you have out, you can choose a neutral background fabric or collection of scraps. I like to audition not only the expected white and beige, but also greys, black, or a solid in an unexpected color, just to see if a surprise background might be called for.
I have several quilts where I've used this short-cut-to-scrappy with good success.
Here's one where I got lots of compliments for my color selection--it;s a Dresden Plate using just one charm pack of Vintage Modern by Bonnie and Camille. I chose to minimize (though not completely delete) the pinks and add more green and aqua from my stash. I took the green range pretty extreme, but still within the palette established by the inspiration fabric line. Then I added a fairly intense aqua blue for plate centers and corner blocks and binding. I like the end result because it's a scrappy yet coordinated quilt, and while someone who knows her fabric lines well may recognize the Vintage Modern line, the end result is unique, not exactly like any of the other dresden plates made with that line.
It's also a thrifty way to make what feels like a very contemporary quilt -- the color scheme is very "now"-- but I only used one charm pack (on sale for $8) together with my big stash of older scraps.
I've had a lot of people look at that quilt and marvel that "all those colors and patterns work together-- you wouldn't think they could." Honestly, I probably wouldn't have picked all those colors and patterns out of a basket on my own, but by working off an established collection, and editing repeatedly, I got something I'm quite pleased with.
Some other "rules of scrappy design" *
- Color value is more important than shade. Using a camera and converting to gray scale can help you spot places where the value selection is off.
- If you aren't happy with a fabric on your design wall, either cut it smaller or add other fabrics that are close but not exact matches. The smaller the pieces, the more liberty you have in mixing unexpected elements
- Remember that any 3 yellows (or insert color of your choice) may clash, but any 30 yellows will pretty much work -- so add more diversity to get a better blend.
- Sometimes your quilting will be the thing that melds the whole discordant collection of colors and patterns into a unified whole. Sometimes it will just take a lot of washing in hot water and time in the sun to make them all work together. (heh-- joking there)
- An unexpected background fabric color can pull a quilt together wonderfully. Audition a variety of backgrounds -- not just neutrals (though they are often what I end up with).
- Also try out a variety of border and binding treatments. I've had some excessively scrappy quilts that didn't quite gel until I added a narrow inner border in black. While I'm not a huge fan of big border treatments or the classic 3 layer border approach I was taught way back in the day, I have found that sometimes a scalloped or wave border is just the perfect thing to pull a scrappy quilt together.
