Ascending the Scrappy Mountain

A couple years ago, a non-sewing friend gave me a generous pile of homespuns and plaids. Seems they had been used for something at her church, that event was over, and she figured I'd give them a good home. She was right about that.

Those homespuns have been weighing on my mind, maybe because they were never out of sight in my sewing room--they have spent all their time in my possession piled on a corner of my cutting table.

A free quilt for the making... Well, not quite free, but closer to free than if I'd had to buy all those fabrics.

So I've been casting around for the perfect project for plaids. I've played in Electric Quilt, looked through lots of books and websites. Once again, I found what I was looking for in Quiltville's most generous stash of free patterns, ideas, and quilt recipes. Scrappy Mountain Majesties is devilishly clever--the look of half square triangles without actually having to make, and true up, half square triangles. Brilliant! Just having finished making a fairly detailed quilt, I figured I was up for a bit of quilt-related smoke and mirrors.

There is a good deal of sewing, sub-cutting, and re-sewing involved in this block, so the sum total of work may be a wash. Even so, this idea looks good to me.

I made a couple test blocks and decided to make the block smaller, finishing at 4 X 5.5 inches.

This, of course, is insane. My Electric Quilt mockup of a bed-sized version uses nearly 450 blocks. Yikes.

How big a quilt? Don't know. I'm going to make a bunch of blocks, throw them up on the design wall and see what percolates.

In the back of my mind is the fear that, to some extent, a quilt with this much of an old-timey country look may be a train that has left the station. But still--all that free fabric. And there may be some twists and turns along the way up this particular scrappy mountain.

Off I go...