Scrappy Fun Day

Some weeks ago, at my request, a friend sent me a padded envelope full of fabric scraps from her quilting room floor.  Okay, I think she really keeps her scraps in bins, not on the floor, but I was enchanted by the image, in The Dean's Watch, by Elizabeth Goudge, of fabric scraps falling to the floor, so let's pretend she scooped them up from there!

Isaac had the kind of mind that delights to collect the pretty colored fragments of old legends that lie about the floor of the world for the children to pick up.  --Elizabeth Goudge, The Dean's Watch

That these scraps surprised me with such vivid, storybook colors only seemed appropriate.  And I was hoping that some of her creative and kind spirit would slip in here with the fabric pieces.

For about a week, I was pretty certain that I wanted to make a randomly-assembled postage-stamp quilt pillow, but was distracted by ideas of wonky log cabins, postage-stamp Christmas stockings, and cathedral windows.  I set it all aside for several weeks, knowing that if I put it all in the back of my mind, the right thing would pop forward at the right time.

Last night, I spend some time googling images for postage-stamp quilts.  This morning I was thinking about mixing in a solid of my own for every-other square and enlarging this to a wall-hanging, still with random colors.  BUT, why not play with the squares a bit first, just for fun?  That ruled out all the quick ways to strip-cut and assemble postage stamp quilts, but I wasn't in a hurry.

The first thing was to put the fabrics in order from light to dark.  That wasn't as easy as it sounded!

Then I cut all the fabric into 1-1/2" strips,

then into 1-1/2" squares, counting as I went.  She was generous:  There were 636 squares, just enough to make a 25" square wallhanging without diluting these with anything from my stash.  I really didn't want to see ME in this.

The pieces that are left over--all less than 1-1/2" in width--are destined to become ornaments as shown in

Christmas with Jinny Beyer:

In case you're wondering, it is tremendous fun to receive a bag of fabric chosen by someone else (with taste).  Like everyone, I get in a fabric-selecting rut at the quilt stores.  It was a treat to receive a bag of beautiful fabric scraps, very few of which I would have thought to have selected myself.  (I tend to go with calicos; she loves contemporary patterns.)

The other reason why today was just plain fun is that I plan most quilts first, then choose the fabric to fit the design.  Working backwards, forming a design based on what fabrics I had was a hoot.  All day I felt like I was putting together a jigsaw puzzle or figuring out a mind-teaser.  It was fun to see what could be made from what was in hand, adding nothing else.  John Hartford, the musician, once sang that "style is based on limitations."

So...getting started, without any clear plan, I laid out a dark diamond:

Then, because to me it's annoying when there's nothing in the center on which to focus, I added a cross and four flowers.

  

The next step was to play with light and dark insets, rather than just fading to a light center as I had originally planned.  And I wanted more punch in the small partial diamonds.

Then, making it up as I went, I abandoned the idea of filling all the diamonds alike, re-sorted the squares by color, and started filling in the diamonds.  Even at this point, I wasn't certain that I didn't want to turn the ceiling fan on high for an instantaneous random, confetti look.

And lastly, I added borders:

  

It's very brightly colored, and on the busy side:  you have to like the crazy quilt look...and I do.  Unfortunately, I assembled it on my desk, so it's going to double as mousepad until I get a chance to sew it!

  

I still want to do some tweaking in each color block, and then to sew it, of course, but that will be on another scrappy fun day.

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(Official Desk Guard Bunny)