Gotta Love the Net!

After completing the Fine-toothed Comb quilt for my niece, I conceived the bright idea of making a quilt for each of my grandchildren for Christmas of 2009.   Please note that this idea occurred around June of 2009.  Yes, yes… what WAS I thinking?  I had absolutely no idea how long it would take to come up with ideas for each grandbaby, decide on the patterns I wanted to use,  locate and amass all the necessary fabrics for the five quilts, make the tops AND the backs, then quilting and binding each quilt.

By the end of the summer, I realized that the Grandbaby Quilt Project wasn’t going to happen for Christmas of 2009…. wayyyyyy more than I could do and work outside the home so I could pay for all these ideas.  So the project was postponed for Christmas of 2010.  I continued to look online for ideas, patterns, fabrics and began getting stuff together for each grandchild’s quilt .  While looking and planning for the next year’s Grandbaby Quilt project, I had the urge to make SOMETHING right then…but had no idea where I wanted to start.  

While surfing the net gathering ideas, watching “how to” quilting videos, reading quilt history, and browsing purveyors of quilt fabrics, I found MaryQuilts, a site full of fantastic scrappy quilt patterns (loved the green double four patch quilt) and then Bonnie Hunter’s Quiltville site with all her wonderful quilts, particularly her Smokey Mountain Stars quilt, and the fantastic tutorials.  Thanks to these ladies, I completely fell in love with scrappy quilts.  There was just one problem:  I didn’t have any fabric scraps other than the bright-bright pink, blue and lime green from my niece’s quilt.

   

I figured I would have to accumulate said fabric scraps by making quilts... lots and lots of quilts.  Then, I remembered all all the flannel squares and remnants that I had saved from making jammies/nightgowns, crib sheets, and a flannel rag quilt.  I dove into my flannel stash and YES!  I did have enough to make a small throw-size quilt for my youngest grandchild, still in a toddler bed and in need of something larger than the baby afghans I had crocheted for her.

Second quilt made and a scrappy quilt at that.  Skills practiced but not yet honed.  What would be the next project?