I am sometimes the happy recipient of other people's leftovers. One church in GA sent me some fabric and in with that fabric was a bunch of scraps that seemed to be coordinated. As I pulled all of the fabric out of the box, I saved out what seemed to be similar in color and touch (very, VERY nice feel to this fabric). Instead of throwing it in with my normal scrap/box, I put it all together in a ziploc bag and put it in my UFOs cabinet. I wanted to keep them together, and didn't know where else to put it.
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This week, I wanted to work on something but am not up to starting something really big like a bargello, intricate illusion quilt or something like that, so I began thinking about my UFOs. I opened the cabinet and pulled out this bag of stuff. I decided to do my own challenge quilt. [Note: I've never been sure of the purpose of a "challenge" quilt just for the purpose of accepting challenge, as I always have plenty of my own projects without someone else telling me what colors, etc to use--]
So, I challenged myself to make a quilt top out of these fabrics--I could add off white/cream to stretch it, but not add other fabrics/colors.
I had to sleep on it overnight.
I decided to go ahead and cut up the fabric into squares and strips, 4.5", 2.5" and 1.5". I decided no triangles as there is more waste with them and I needed all the fabric I could possibly come up in order to get a bed sized quilt.
At least that is my story and I'm sticking to it!
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I made as many small 4 patches out of the 1.5" strips as I could before I went to EQ to see what I could do.
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I have always liked the simplicity of floating blocks of fabric and these fabrics are really pretty/nice, but found out quickly that I actually had more fabric than I would need for that simple style and I wanted to use it all up, so I came up with this design:
(I only floated the 2.5" squares):
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I managed to use up almost every bit of fabric. I do have some scrappy 2.5" blocks that I made by sewing small pieces together.
And here's the top. Just finished. And almost no leftovers/scraps (OK, OK...there are a few, but not many, I promise!) In the end it looks more white than I envisioned on the computer, but it is fine and I am pleased.
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It is queen sized---88x96"