One of the things I have always loved about quilting is how a whole lot of stuff comes together to make a lovely quilt. Thanks to a group who loves swaps, I have really come to appreciate the really scrappy quilt. We have exchanged a lot of things: hourglass blocks, 5″ squares, log cabin blocks, lots of stuff – and since a number of people have been involved in the swaps, the stack of stuff I get back tends to be a very random, unrelated stack of things.

The last few years, my eye has been drawn to really scrappy quilts. I’m using patterns that focus on the contrast between light and dark more than a specific color or style of fabric. I have been cutting up my stash (that’s a long term effort for sure) and more and more, I am finding fabrics that on their own, don’t go with anything, but when cut up fit right into my scrap quilts

I am also noticing, while working on several projects at the same time, that there is a whole lot of chaos and nothing for a long time, then all of a sudden there are blocks that can be sewn together as a top. I don’t think I will ever get tired of watching all of the chaos and destruction of my cutting table suddenly coalesce into a stack of blocks that are enough to make a quilt. This is the one and only are of my life, where my effort directly translates into taming the insanity and creating something good. I seem to really need that a lot of late.

One of my projects is a quilt made up of 256 6″ squares with a circle appliquéd on each one. When I started it was a stack of pretty fat quarters in a plastic box. Then it was a stack of circles cut out and a stack of squares. I’m about half way through the applique process and all of a sudden I have a box of finished blocks and I can now start to see what the finished quilt is going to look like. It’s so exciting to see it start to come together.

Another project is 169 6″ pineapple blocks. So far I have 26 completed, but that’s enough to see my happy little stacks coming together and I can see the promise of that project coming together even though there is a long road of strip cutting and piecing ahead of me.

I know no matter what all happens out there in the world, I can continue to make something out of nothing happen in my sewing room.