Design wall Monday

Yes, I know it's Tuesday here, but if I put it up on Monday it's too early! And much as I love both blogging and quilting, I'm not getting up at 3 am to do them. Today on the design wall (floor) we have the latest large scrap quilt I have launched myself into - shoo fly blocks!!! I am completely loving Bonnie's strip scrap system. I just picked up my little bag of light 2 1/2" strips, my little bag of dark 2 1/2" strips and my companion angle ruler and off I go! The squares can be cut from the same strips as the triangle halves and they all go together beautifully. I have done 53 and I will do about 100 for this quilt.

I was inspired by the process of creating this lovely quilt, which was in turn inspired by an antique quilt in a book ... I thought two things "that's such a nice quilt" and "I have that book!". So I dug it up and went back through it - it is a treasure trove of pictures of old quilts. I found it cheap in a remaindered bookshop, and it has been worth every cent. My inspiration for my shoo fly quilt is this one.

Isn't that a terrible photo? Perhaps this is better. It's a nine patch and the one above is a churn dash, but the idea is the zig zag setting - I stared at that pink nine patch quilt for AGES trying to figure out how it was set. It doesn't go together on point in any direction. Then, finally, when I saw the churn dash in the book it clicked in that they used setting quarter-square triangles. Which opens up all sorts of possibilities! I think I'm going to set this shoo flies with a different fabric for each zig zag. More scrappy that way....