A fabric jigsaw puzzle - almost

The difference is I can chop off a piece if it's a little too long, or sew another hunk of fabric onto a piece if it's a little two short. As I've said before, there are very few actual orphan blocks in this work-in-progress. You can see a 25-patch in teal and purple and cream - that's a leftover block from the Double Irish Chain I made for my daughter to take to college. She had roommate problems her first year, and spent many a night wrapped in this quilt on the floor of friends' rooms. You can see part of the finished quilt in this picture of their kitty. There are a couple rail fence blocks left over from a baby quilt I made for one of my assistants at work. There is a nine patch or two and a pinwheel. There are lots and lots of leftover chunks of strata from various projects. And lots and lots of half square and quarter square triangle squares. There are even a few that I turned into Broken Dishes blocks - as Finn said this wouldn't be complete without a few of those. Some of the blocks you see on the design wall are already stitched together, others are not. I don't want to stitch too many together as I want to have freedom of placement for color and value balance. Many of the "spare parts" were enlarged by using the "mile-a-minute" method - very effective for a project like this. So far this is both the same and different from sewing string or crumb blocks - easier and harder at the same time. As the others it's been very addicting - in spite of my best plans I've done nothing but this all day. I didn't even go upstairs to watch the baseball game - instead I listened on the radio while I sewed.

On the ironing board you can see lots of trimmed "parts" as well as some still needing trimming and some needing pressing. I most likely won't get to all those before I have to head to bed, so I decided to post anyway before I finished. I still have no feeling as to how big this quilt will become. I'm pulling random strips of various widths out of drawers, have robbed my bin of 2" squares, and even robbed a bit from my tubs of half square triangle squares. I'd love for this to become big enough to serve as a quilt for our camper, or possibly a Hotel Hope quilt. I've had the same pleasure making this quilt as I did my Broken Dishes - revisiting fabrics from so many past projects. Once again I'm amazed at how fabrics have changed through the years and how my tasted have changed too. There are so many fabrics here that I'd never use and would never buy now - yet they all look great together in this quilt. There are even pieces from Amy the Calico Cat - scraps I happily took off her hands from the quilt she made of homespuns. Amazingly enough they look great mixed in with all the rest.

I probably won't show more of this top until it is done - after all, the pictures don't really look all that different from the ones I posted this morning. I wanted a record of progress made - progress I'm very happy with - at least so far.