One of my Make Nine 2021 prompts is a UFO finish. This scrappy string quilt is a viable contender.
 |
| String pieced scrappy quilt top. |
There are leftover blocks from a quilt made in the 1990s adjacent to blocks made in 2021. I'm sure the fabrics span at least 3 decades.
Although I can't put my hands on the book right now, the technique was from a book, "Easy Pieces: Creative Color Play with Two Simple Quilt Blocks," by Margaret J. Miller, a innovative quiltmaker ahead of her time. Additional blocks have joined this stack of blocks as this UFO [unfinished object] has surfaced and resurfaced over the years.
Scrap Quilts: Color vs Value
To me, scrap quilts are the best—innovative, serendipitous, and a brilliant use of seemingly unrelated bits working together for a magnificent outcome. Making them is a good exercise in the study of value. Value is the lightness or darkness of a hue. It's been said, "Color gets all the credit, but Value does all the work." Scrap quilts are living proof!
"Make Do" stash blocks
In 2017, my guild teammates and I presented a program on "making do"... illustrating ideas for using fabrics from the stash... using what you already have... or, "making do" as our foremothers did. From this program came a sampling of 5" string-pieced blocks.
 |
| Five-inch string pieced blocks using fabric scraps and leftovers. |
Somewhere along the way, these two sets of blocks joined forces.
 |
| Center block units are 6" finished. The zig-zag border has 4.5" finished blocks. |
At the end of March, I finished the top. Now I'm on the hunt for a backing. Then to baste (my least favorite step in the process).
 |
| Scrappy string quilt top. |
An empty design wall?
The "top layer" of the design wall is empty. Peeling back the flannel top layer will unearth the layers beneath that are sporting other in-progress works. |
| Empty design wall? Only the top layer. |
What long-time UFO will be revealed??? I'm sure I'll find something that I'd forgotten about... and it will again make its way to the needle and continue the journey to completion.
