A Flash From the Quilting Past

I wrote this picture dense post for Rejoice Always in January of '07, and even though I completely finished it at the time I just saved it as a draft and never published it. I'm not sure why. I think it's time it saw the light of day...

January 14, 2007

I spent Monday putting together a small challenge quilt to be auctioned off for Relay for Life. The challenge was to make a quilt featuring the color pink no more than 100'' all the way around. I discovered why people like to make small quilts...I had no idea I could put a top together in a day. I thought it would be fun to do step-by-step documentation of the process. Looking back over the pics it seems like I took a picture every two seconds at first and then towards the middle and end kept forgetting to take them, so there are some gaps in the documentation.

I started by sorting through my scrap box for any and all usable scraps. Comments on this step in the process: 1) Yes, I need a better system for my scraps, but that's a project for another day off. 2) My scraps look so red and blue...which I guess is why I didn't find too too many usable scraps for this particular project.



OK, here are my usable scraps pressed and ready to go. Now I look at them and start sewing them together pretty randomly based on which ones look similar in size and look nice next to each other. I trim liberally.







By the time I completed this unit below, I had pretty much exhausted my scraps and it seemed like a good place to stop. I broke for a cup of tea.



I had pulled every pink, spring green, and grey fabric in my stash and after my tea break I went through them and made my final choices for what fabrics I would use for the rest of the quilt top, pictured here:



Then, in the longest most tedious step of the process I pressed each piece of fabric and cut one strip from it, at a random widths. Most were straight although I cut a few intentionally off grain.



Then I added strips to my scrappy unit:



Then, using the scraps from the strips I just added to the scrappy unit (are you with me here?) I did this part to add in:



The finished top:



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Edited to add this picture of the final quilt, hand quilted with baptist fans: