Pre-election Jitters Quilting

I won't deny it.  I have been a very jittery poll watcher these last couple of days.  My family is rolling their eyes at me, because I just can't settle.  How could we possibly end up with an election that matters quite so much?  I decided I needed a fresh, shiny new project to distract me the other day (justification to start a new project is always so sweet) and somehow ended up working with these colors. lol

Wondering what I'm doing.....

The scrap bin is overflowing once again and when I was trying to clean it up a bit, I chanced to see a very complementary pair of fabrics laying on top of each other. That's about all the inspiration I needed to jump into yet another Scrap Attack project!  See?  Nothing subliminal going on at all!  hehe

The scraps that started it all.

The little bit of Gwen Marston influence the other day undoubtedly influenced me as well.  I actually did spend about an hour combing through my books and patterns to see if I could find a very simple pattern that would transfer well to scraps.  Truthfully, that was a bit disappointing.  My mind was thinking of big things and the scraps are mostly about small stuff.  I finally came up with a basic scrappy log-cabin-like brick block.

What to do, what to do???

I managed to sew about four blocks before I ran out of time in my day.  Yay for the blocks!  Looking good.  Sort of.  I went to bed and then, of course, laid awake forever wondering what and how I was going to manage with my (by now) seemingly way too small amount of scraps!  See, it's all about perception.  First off, I was being over-run with scraps and then, after a few short hours, I was bemoaning my pitiful little offerings!

Fixed a couple blocks and looking at border fabric.

Just before I fell asleep (which I have discovered is the very best time to be making quilting decisions), I finally figured out how I needed to proceed.   The biggest challenge to myself was that I really only wanted to use fabric from my scrap totes.  I love challenges to myself.  Don't you?  It keeps things very focused and forces the mind into unbelievable contortions of what if? what if?

It's starting to look like a quilt!

And so that's how my alternate blocks came into play--block after block.  After I got the main part of the quilt together, I had to finess a few blocks for better drama until it finally looked 'together' enough to quit.  I did look at the rest of my scraps and contemplate a very scrappy, improv border, but I decided to relax my Scrap Attack mentality for the next step.  It worked out very well for the main part of the quilt, but I thought the border might need something different.

I always knew I'd been hoarding these muddy, purple-brown fabrics for a reason.  Every time I buy this color, I wince and wonder what strange reason makes me buy such a sad, sad color of fabric!  Let me just tell you that I might seriously question my reasoning, but I've learned to go ahead and just buy the weird, random fabrics for my stash.  They have been some of the most important fabrics I have ever used in fact!

Now I have dug through and found a few little orphan blocks to add for the impromptu border.  Yes, these are circles from the 9-patch series #4 quilt border.  No, I did not steal them from that particular project, as they are the LEFTOVERS.   And yes, there definitely can be leftovers even when that other project isn't even done yet. lol!  I know, it's complicated.  I'll just stop trying to explain now and leave you to enjoy the rest of your day.  Mine is a little better though after working through some of my pre-election jitters.*wink