Lucky me!

I love collaborative quilting. Thanks to everyone who weighed in about what to do with my four patches. I went with option #1, and started sewing blocks together, alternating the hourglass with the little four-patches. This is 30 blocks, measuring 15 by 18, and I have lots more to sew. Since this is a scrappy quilt, I decided to make some of the hourglass patches scrappy as well -- see the top row. After I took this picture, I saw the hourglass on the left that needs a 90 degree twist.Other than that, I'm quite liking this arrangement. Stay tuned.
I was rummaging (ah....looking) through mom's stash during a visit yesterday and I came up with this little picture of collaborative quilting in blue and white. She paid 49 cents for it, and I thought I would collaborate with her by taking it home to live with my fabrics for a bit.

Here's another reason I'm lucky. Look what Tonya sent me from her great collection of fabrics! Lots of strips from a jellyroll, and some charm squares and some 10 inch square and some fun scraps. Thanks so much! I'm going to have fun with these.
My mother added to my luck with these black and white half yard cuts (she was in Arizona recently, so she bought American measurements). Isn't that sewing/dressmaking/fashion one a hoot! Thanks, Mom!
And there's more. When I was nicely asking for a few hand dyed fabrics (she's also a hand dyer, and very generous, lucky me again) to match the blocks I'm making for the Friday block party, she offered me this stack of pastel hand dyes. Of course, I had to be polite and say yes. Yes!
And then I made her happy by taking some fabric from the "ugly"bin underneath the worktable. I'm looking for stuff that will match the four-patch quilt made from older fabrics, as well as stuff I can cut up for the scrap bin. That green/white/red print second from the left was one I bought 15 or so years ago and made us each a camp shirt. I'm going to make bags from it, put some in the ever-growing I Spy collection, and use the rest of it inside tea cozies.
I should have taken a picture of the lovely applique quilt my mother is making, but I forgot my camera at home. Next time. Thanks again.

Another four-patch option

So I was playing some more and came up with another one. I'd really like a wonky option or two as well. Anyone have any ideas? I thought of using the four-patches as centres for wonky log cabins, but that would be a lot more sewing. I only have 160 of these 3.5 inch four-patches, so I will have to make more alternating blocks like the hourglass ones, or use neutral 3.5 inch blocks, or have another plan altogether. Here's number 4. I'm still open to more opinions. People seem to like #1 or #2 below, and #3 is a distant third. So what about this one?

Bonnie's scrap user fungly four patch

I tested Bonnie's scrap user system recently with a bag of 3.5 inch squares leftover from the fungly quilts and a box of strips. Many of these were fabrics from mom's stash purchased in the 1980s -- lots of little busy calicos, cottons of dubious quality, and even more of that Hoffman Painted Desert stuff. I sewed dark to light as best as I could, pieced some crumbs leftover from cutting the 3.5 inch blocks, and even threw in a leftover 16 patch from my 2 inch square quilt and came up with a 48" square. I needed this to be 60 by 80 for a donation quilt to Mennonite Central Committee, so I started sewing strips together from the strip bin to make it rectangular. Many of the strips are from my mother's days of log cabin quilting, so they match the busy calicos as well. The only yardage used was the grey dot, another inheritance from dear mom, and it was a narrow piece 100 inches long so I didn't have to piece the borders. This came together really quickly, since I spent little time cutting but could engage in some mindless sewing, which soothes the soul at times. Thanks Bonnie, for a great system. This quilt proved it was worth the effort to organize my scraps, and now they're ready to use whenever I need to make another quick quilt. Now this top moves back to my mother, who will take it to the local MCC depot for completion, since they've got a good supply of batting and backing. And everyone is happy -- I've used up lots of uglies and oldies, and they have another quilt for relief.

Two inch square finish!

So after digging through her stash, my mother found some solid blue and a multi-coloured heart print to coordinate with the pink and blue squares from that box of two inch squares. She cut and I sewed for a few hours last week and came up with this baby quilt, measuring about 40 by 47. She took it home to layer it and tie or quilt it, and it's headed for some as-yet-unknown baby. That makes two quilts from that box of two inch squares. The first one is all sewn together, and is just awaiting borders.

Using up a big box of little squares

Since Christmas, I've been sewing two-inch squares together. I "inherited" a box of thousands of squares from my mother's studio. About 20 years ago, she cut 2 inch strips off everything in her stash and made a log cabin using values, not colours. The rest she cut into 2 inch squares to make a water colour quilt. After years of not her getting to the water colour, I took the box home with me and started making this double four-patch out of darks and lights.

Above, it is laid out unsewn on my bed, and the borders of my handquilted Amish square within a square quilt (made by my mother for our wedding) are peeking out. You can see there are many, many colours in the dark squares. I also found a pile of 3 1/2 inch squares in a dark print that I used for the bigger four patch. The only squares I cut in this whole double quilt were the neutral 3 1/2 inches and some light 2 inches when I ran out. I've used up about 1,200 little squares for this project.

After that, I still had many, many squares left, so I sewed together the medium pinks and blues. This time I had to cut the bigger squares, again from my mother's stash. Right now she's looking for sashing so I can make this a crib size quilt.

This has been fun -- mindless sewing and no cutting. The biggest challenge has been finding coordinating fabrics from the 1980s and 1990s to match the busy prints in the squares. And I'm determined not to buy any new yardage to use up this old fabric.

Stay tuned for more 2 inch square projects. there's hundreds left, mostly in busy florals. Those may be a challenge.

One question: I uploaded both of these photos exactly the same way and with the same instructions, but only the second one enlarges when you click on it. Any suggestions?