So that just happened …

I decided to try something new today and it took a while before I was actually satisfied that it was going to look presentable.

On one hand, I typically like the fabrics in my quilts to be coordinated, no clashing of colors or prints, nothing that’s just “close enough” – let’s just say I’m pretty particular.  On the other hand, I don’t like having a scrap stash because it just grows and grows and becomes almost an obligation to deal with so I am always looking for ways to prevent that from happening.  I started out by passing on all my scraps to get them out of my house so I could, without any guilt at all, start with fresh fabric on each new project.  However, as I’ve said in other posts, plans change.

Then I saw an idea for using scraps in a crazy helter-skelter kind of strip-quilt-as-you-go thing and when I went to my scraps I was able to divide them into two piles, one bright and colourful and the other more earthy, so I set out to make two quilts in this very different to me style.  I would seriously never put all these fabrics together in a regular quilt and it took a lot of free spirit (which I am short on) to just sit down and start!  Thankfully, most of my scraps were already strips so I had very little patching to do.

Notice the polyester batting which I don’t normally use; my mom has some in stock and wants it used up, but I have to admit that my bamboo cotton batting has spoiled me for everything else!  The jury is still out on whether or not I will use up anymore of hers …

I was a bit skeptical with the first few strips, but once I got going it started to look pretty funky and when I added the curvy quilting lines (which seriously only took about 20 minutes) I was definitely OK with it, so now I have a happy looking quilt AND a great system for using my scraps! (no, the binding is not finished but I really wanted to post this before I sit down and relax for the evening, and hand stitching the binding is my evening fun)

(This quilt has been sold.)