New to me!

Perhaps it's because I've been sewing with the kids during Embroidery Camp this week, but whatever the reason, my quilting mojo is BACK!  I've been exhausted when I get home each day, often in the shop from 8 AM til 7 PM, but no matter - once dinner is done, I've been heading down to my sewing room to work on quilts!  I've made some progress on the sashing and cornerstone blocks for my plaid string quilt and I've got the top half of my blue and white chevron joined into one piece, but that's not all.

First of all, I really want to make this quilt for a friend's new baby.  I happened upon some red and white anchor fabric and wham!  I was inspired to pull and cut fabrics for the whole quilt.  Which, for me, is so far from normal!  I never cut out a whole quilt in advance!  Since I'm usually so scrappy, I just go along piece by piece until a quilt is done.  With the whole thing cut out, it shouldn't take much time at all to get it all pieced together.

EXCEPT...

A friend gave me a bunch of magazines and I fell in love with this Carpenter's Wheel quilt from Spring/Summer 2008 Quilt Sampler.

Love, love, LOVE!!

I love it in all its scrappy and 30s repro glory, but I don't have enough 30s repro fabrics to make it...yet.  I also don't have enough bright white.  But what I DO have is lots of natural/cream muslin and a bunch of civil war repro scraps, all somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 yard.  My brain kicked into gear - what if I made something that WASN'T scrappy?  What if I just picked 8 print fabrics to make the star points and went from there?  Not all the fabrics are actually repros, but close enough.

Can I stand to make a quilt with only 9 fabrics?  Will it hold my interest while piecing?  Will it hold my interest as a finished quilt?  We shall soon find out!

And not only am I using a limited number of fabrics, but I also used the grid method for making HSTs, so I cut all the fabric for the quilt before taking a single stitch.  Again, this is so new to me!  But, I can see how "less scrappy" can also mean "more efficient" when it comes to piecing.  I can't believe how many HSTs I have already done with so little effort!

I've never used this method before, but then, I've never made a quilt that would use so many of the same fabric combo HSTs.  I love how quick and easy this is!

32 HSTs pieced in about 5 minutes?  I love it!  There's no way I could make as many scrappy ones in the same amount of time.

Who knows, I may not like the look once I get all the pieces ready to make a block, and then I'll have a quilt's worth of HSTs left over.  But even so, I guarantee I'll find a use for them somewhere.

I see a lot of piecing ahead in my weekend plans.  How about you?