Slow and Steady Scrap Quilt

If there’s a 12 step program for quilting, I would have to introduce myself by saying, “My name is Mandy Leins, and I have been buying fabric for 15 years.” The truth is, though, I haven’t bought (very much) fabric for the last couple because I have so much that I don’t even have places to put it. I did a huge cull of my stuff when I moved the longarm upstairs about 6 months ago, and from that I donated a couple hundred yards to my local guild for comfort quilts.  Since then, I’ve been trying to think of a scrappy quilt or six to make that uses up a chunk of my fat quarters, but which also requires the least amount of planning on my part, and which I can make while I work on my other projects.  Last night, I think I came upon just the right solution.

A few years ago,  my mom got me a little Accuquilt GO! and it came with this die I didn’t think I’d get much use out of.

At the time, I played around with it a bit using solids, and all the different sized blocks nested, which was nice.  Now, several years later, I’m thinking this little die will be the answer to my scrap quilt prayers Here’s my plan:

1) select a more or less coordinated selection of fat quarters.  Or–what the heck–just use them all!  No planning!

2) Crank a couple through whenever I come down to my sewing room: it’s on the way to the laundry room, and we do a *lot* of laundry.  This should be cake, right?  Riiiiiight.

3) Dump the same-sized bits in separate bags to grab from, so it is randomly scrappy.

4) piece some stuff, either on purpose for this project or a few bits and pieces here and there as leaders while I’m working on other things

5) do that a lot.

6) eventually put the quilt top together.

Think it’ll work?  I have high hopes. They key part will be, though, to do the next,

7) post about it once a week to show my progress, because the stars know I won’t keep grinding away at a quilt for myself if I don’t have some accountability.