Finishing a long-buried top

I cleaned out the top of my shelves in the days after Christmas. That's where I chuck finished things that aren't going to be used immediately, and un-finished things that I will do one day, and random lengths of batik I bought in Indonesia, and things in progress that have been demoted, or are being punished for their sins. That's a lot of crap to put on a Expedit four by four.

So I cleared it off, found homes for most of it, and finished up this scrap quilt. It was on the bottom of the pile because I didn't really like it. It's crumb blocks, turned into triangles and made into pinwheels with sixteen different fabrics. But it's nice and big, and will be useful, so I finished it up with some basic machine quilting in the ditch.

Excuse the bad photo - it's been a bit hard to find a day that's not either vividly bright sunny or blowing an absolute gale. The hot grey windy days are the worst. Here's a close up.



One of the reasons I've lost enthusiasm for this quilt was because I was sewing it at the quilt retreat I did in May 2010. I brought a big bag of scraps and I was happily whacking them together at great speed and with little thought ... and someone decided to have a conversation with me about how I should do more complicated things, that take more time, but are worth it, to have something really nice. And suddenly my scrappy messes didn't seem so fun any more. I don't usually mind too much what people say but I think it touched a nerve ... and resulted in nearly three years at the top of the shelf for this poor inoffensive quilt.

This is the back- I also found some strip sets (the yellow and blue) on the shelf that I used and more Samoan prints!!! Only twenty-eight yards to go!!!