Scrappy fun and the winter blues

I don't know about you, but this brutally cold winter is really getting to me.  I have been in a real funk creatively, both in the kitchen and the studio.  You would think I would be cooking and sewing my guts out.  Maybe I need more sunlight or something.

Anyway, I have been sewing and my challange is to work strictly from my stash.  I have been intrigued by the notion of a scrap quilt for quite a while.  I spent two days sorting and cutting all of my scraps into uniform sizes to do this.  I found a pattern that I liked.  It seems that it needed a constant background in order to please me.  I had purchased a bolt of muslin a while ago and so I decided to use that as the constant.

So, I decided on a Bonnie Hunter scrap quilt pattern I found on Pinterest.  Most people paper pieced this, but I just took my 2 x 3 inch scraps and strung them together.  Muslin triangles on each side.

Here are the blocks all squared up and ready to be put into rows.

Here some are on the design wall.  I decided I didn't need to plan this one out as mich as I usually do.  Just trust the scrappiness!

Here is the top, all finished!  Well, I need to swap around that one small section of the border that's going the wrong direction, but other than that...  Can't have the birdies flying upside down now, can we?

I even pieced the backing for this one from flannel scraps.  It isn't the most beautiful back in the world, but it works in the spirit of scrappiness and will be nice feeling when it's used.  This quilt is actually big enough for our bed!  Most of my projects tend to run smaller.

Now I need to sandwich this one and get it ready for quilting.  And this is the part where I always get stumped... How to quilt this...  I think something more complicated in the muslin areas is in order.  Leave the scrappy area pretty much alone.  What do you think?  Something will come to me, I am sure.

Until then, ciao!

One Little Birdie