Every crafter has half-finished projects.  Sometimes, we let them go -- half-finished -- for someone else to play with. 

Last year, I acquired a bunch of fabric from someone else, which included twelve hand-sewn nine-patches.  The stitching was pretty close to the raw edges, only an eighth-inch seam allowance, which made me nervous about fraying in the wash!  But I was charmed by these sweet, lopsided nine-patches, and decided to set them in some brown scraps (leftover from another crafter's plundered kit).  

Last year, at the Northwest Quilters' Guild's Festival of Quilts, I saw a selection of "mini quilts".  Most were doll-bed sized.  I remember looking at them and thinking two things simultaneously: 

1. What's the point of a tiny quilt?
and 
2. I can make it tinier!

So one day, I took a post-it note for foundation paper, and marked one-inch squares on it.  Within those squares, I marked the lines of a pineapple block.  This picture shows several stages of the process in one frame: the back of the quilt-top, half made, half bordered, half-un-papered!  

But let's look at more pictures.  

Last night, I pulled out a bunch of scraps and some double-sided applique web, and tried my first fabric collage.  As I worked, I was thinking of water and aquatic plants, but subsequent alterations make it resemble mountains more.  

I was in a creative zone, and took few pictures, so I'll describe verbally what I did, with reference to the pictures I do have.  

I have mentioned before that I dislike Gee's Bend quilts.  This is a rare opinion... people tend to love Gee's Bend quilts, or at least praise them.  Good for them!  I am all for people loving art that speaks to them.  What interests me today is the squirming cringe I feel when I say I don't agree.  Why do I feel constrained to pad my opinion, when I give it, in a lot of stuffing about how great the quilts are, really, even if they're not my thing?  That psychology interests me more than the quilts themselves! 

Remember how I said the 1970's scrap fabric would have to wait ("A Groovy New York Beauty")?  

It didn't wait long!  One day when I was wiped out from school and didn't want to work on my Meadow quilt, I pulled out the 70's scraps, and began making blocks.  

Previously, I had settled on a layout for my Tritanomaly Quilt featuring Tula Pink fabric... but I didn't put it together immediately, because I wasn't excited about it.  But then, I realized that I had enough blocks to make two lap quilts, and that I might like the colors better if I separated the pink from the orange, so I went back to the design wall to experiment.  The result is a smaller 3-yard quilt, suitable for a child or a throw quilt for a couch, and I know just the child who will be delighted with it! 

For layout, I sew all the pink/blue churn dashes together with the Protea print blocks, taking care that all of the flowers face the same direction so the quilt has a definite up and down orientation.  I border the entire thing with pink, and corner it with blue.  I layer it with a frankenbatting and back it with an old, 100% cotton sheet, yellow.  Time to quilt! 

I visited the Quiltopia quilt show in Salem, OR last year with a non-quilting friend.  She said "Oh, it's so sad that this is a dying art!".  Queried I: "What makes you think it's dying?", and she responded by pointing out the aging demographic she saw... that most of the people at the show were middle-aged to elderly.  She worried that they would age and die, and thus would perish quilting!  But, I countered, the middle-aged-to-elderly demographic is constantly renewed, as people age into it!