The Down Side of Belonging to a Quilt Guild

The downside of belonging to a quilt guild is that you get inspired to make yet another quilt.  I blame it on Cherry.  Last year she was working away at string blocks like these, pulling fabric strings out of a brown paper bag without making any attempt to coordinate colors or prints.  They weren't fabrics I liked.  But, I was still drawn to the quilt.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get the idea out of my head....

So, instead of starting on one of the fabulous quilts on my Quilting-to-Do List, such as the Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt, Camille's Swoon out of Anna Maria Horner fabrics, or working with Kaffe or Denyse Schmidt fabrics, I'm stitching these UGLY(!!!) string blocks!  What is wrong with me??!!

What is wrong with me?  Well, let me tell you....

These ugly fabrics represent too many memories.  They are scraps from sewing oodles of appliqued cardigan sweatshirts (all the rage in the 80's!!), an extended family quilt project, a nightgown I made for my mother, scraps from lots of quilts I made early in my quilting journey, t-shirt quilts for others, and much, much more.  I can't bear to throw them away, and they are too ugly to give away.  So, it's up to me to turn them into something that will draw me in vs. repulse me.  I figure I'll plug away at them when I'm too brain dead to work on something more creative.

photo credit - C&T Publishing

I also blame Christina Cameli.  I recently purchased her First Steps to Free-Motion Quilting book in preparation for the machine quilting class I'll be teaching to my quilt guild and a few local ladies.  In her book she has this lovely "Wiggle-Bottom Cushion" - a chair pad made from a string block.  I love the FMQ on it.  I can envision that fabulous stitching transforming my ugly string blogs and turning them into something wonderful.  Maybe??  Am I being unrealistic??

One thing I did do - I did separate out the bright, clear, true-color scraps from the ugly 80/90's scraps.  That helped.  At least the ugly fabrics aren't contaminating the scraps I do like.  But, I'm still left with this garbage can full of strings - yikes!

(Don't let this picture fool you - the can is way bigger than it appears; it's the large IKEA pail, not the smaller one!!)

This smaller bucket of strings will become a Spiderweb Quilt, inspired by the one by Crazy Mom Quilts.

Who else can I blame??

:)

Update, 1/26/15 - After seeing Sherri's string blocks today, I am even more convinced of the ugliness of my blocks - whaaaaahhh!!