This past week, I gifted the quilt to Claire, so I wanted to show you the final product…..

There are still a couple of stories to tell about this one, and those will come in the next two weeks!

I had so much fun working on this quilt and remembering the 9-year-old who I would pick up from school one day a week, and we would spend a couple of hours quilting together.

She would always be starving and loved a warmed tortilla with spicy pimento cheese. I think of her EVERYTIME I pop a tortilla into the microwave to warm!!

I loved watching her pick fabrics…..

and make quilts….mostly to be given to her family and friends!

She was a quick learner….

…and had a great creative spirit.

This was the last quilt that we made together in 2019…..

….a Christmas gift for her Mom.

And here she is today…..

A beautiful young woman with a sweet, Godly spirit and a BOATLOAD of possibilities ahead of her!!

On one of our sewing days, she was working on something over in the corner, and I found this the next day….

It brought a smile to my face at the time, just as my memory of our time together does now!!

Go Claire…..GO!!!!!

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In my quickie update about the retreat, I showed you the work that I had done on the scrap quilt I am making for Claire…

Once I had these blocks sewn together, I was paralyzed about what to do next.

My original plan was to applique big flowers in each of the white spaces, but it just didn’t seem appropriate now!

I was also struggling with what type of border to add. I played with a couple of ideas along these lines….

…but nothing seemed to be working.

Deb H. suggested that a black border would be too heavy, but that using black for the binding might be perfect. SUCH a good idea!!

When I got home, I put it on the design wall and started playing more with borders. I liked the idea of two borders, and loved the yellow….

But as I looked more, I realized that I wanted to continue the checkerboard pattern into the border, so now I am thinking along these lines….

I liked this idea, but knew that piecing would be difficult….but where is the fun if everything is EASY!!

I started by sewing long strips of yellow and blue together, then added the first border with the B-W-B three-patch…

I decided that I needed to miter the corners, and they were MOSTLY successful. As usual, there was one that just wouldn’t work right, but we aren’t going to worry about that!!

I added the outer border with the additional black squares next.

I like how this looks, especially with a black binding in the future….

But I am stuck again!!

NOW….it looks TOO plain, so maybe I need to add my flowers???

I decided to let it “rest” for a few days and see if inspiration strikes.

Come back for more!!

Back in July, I looked at my strip scraps and realized I had an inordinate number of brown scraps, but whenever I have used brown before, it’s made a BORING quilt. Don’t want to do THAT again.

Then I saw a picture on Facebook of a quilt using brown with touches of red. Now THAT sounded interesting.

I made a few prototype blocks to see how they looked…..

And I could see there were many possibilities with this design.

Then, life got busy, and it was relegated to a UFO Box….

Now, when I got ready to work on it again, I made a whole series of videos about my excellent idea for piecing the strip sets without wasting tons of fabric.

BUT, between moving to a new phone AND to a new computer, those videos have vanished into thin air!! Actually, they are probably floating somewhere out there in the ether-world, but I can’t find them!

So, I will tell you that it was cut from strip sets….

….. and show you the finished quilt top……

I had a lot of fun moving the blocks around, trying to come up with a design I loved.

To make my “future self” happy, I went ahead and put together a simple backing…..

…using up MORE of my brown fabrics.

AND, I even made the binding….

Now it resides in an empty drawer, awaiting motivation to get it quilted…..

It was a fun project to work on because, for the most part, it was mindless sewing, and that was EXACTLY what I needed!

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“Let’s Get Scrappy is about how to decide, not about what to make.”

Let’s Get Scrappy is an on-demand online course that helps quilters overcome decision fatigue and finally make sense of their overflowing scrap bins. With four hours of step-by-step video instruction, you’ll learn simple systems for organizing, piecing, and pressing your scraps—so you can stop overthinking and start sewing beautiful, coordinated quilts with confidence and joy.