A Scrappy Sunday Afternoon

A funny thing happened when I went looking for an orphan project to offer up for the Quilt Orphan Adoption event ...

I pulled out the project I had in mind and put the completed blocks on the design wall.

The fabrics in some of these blocks came from a long-ago fabric swap where we exchanged 8 10 inch-strips and 2 squares of fabric, sized and chosen to make two of these blocks. The pattern came from Eileen Sullivan when she was a guest on Simply Quilts. The quilt was called Summer Vine.

(I tried to find a link, but was unsuccessful)

In addition to these blocks, I had a printed copy of the fabric swap guidelines and–fortunately for me–the block directions from the old Simply Quilts website.  There were also many strip sets for more blocks, still in the envelopes they had arrived in.

My plan was to count up the number of blocks that could be made from those strips ... but what happened is when I started to do so, I think I discovered why I probably stopped making the blocks - incomplete swap packages and questionable fabrics.

Then I second guessed myself and thought maybe I had misread the swap guidelines ... so I sat down and tried to make blocks from the swaps with missing strips.  Way back then, I didn't have scraps or much of a stash.  Today, it wasn't such a big deal to dig into my bin of cream and tan scraps and find something close in value to make up the difference.   After making those two blocks ... I made four more.

Too many of the fabrics either seemed too old and uninteresting or the quality just isn't very good, so I decided not to pass them on to a potential adoptive quilter.   But since I have quite a few blocks made and all those unwrapped strips sets–and they're not all "bad," I am going to cut the strips to make block kits and assemble the rest of the blocks as a leader/ender project.  I still haven't counted the number of potential blocks ... or decided what I'll do with them when I'm done making blocks.

I am joining the party for Oh Scrap! with these very old, very scrappy blocks.

I also haven't decided what will become of the scrappy Wavy Gravy blocks I have been hand-piecing. Now there are four.

For me the most fun has been finding fabrics in my scraps to use in this block.  I thought I would stop at four blocks and make a pillow cover (and that still might happen), but yesterday, I put together 2 more groups of four fabrics (in pinks and grays) ... and will likely prepare some more pieces for some slow Sunday stitching.

I'm joining the party for Monday Making.