Flannel Parts

While I'm waiting for all my new fabrics for baby quilts to arrive I thought I would do something with the leftovers from my own flannel quilt. Over on Quiltdivajulie's blog I read about the Hope Squared Project sponsored by Margaret's Hope Chest. Hope Squared is an effort to collect 400 newly minted quilts to distribute to homeless children currently enrolled in the Grand Rapids, MI public school system. Having grown up in Michigan, spending summers not far from Grand Rapids, I felt compelled to contribute to the effort.

Yesterday I gathered up the scraps from my quilt and pulled some additional yardage I've had on hand that I thought might work with them. I fussy cut a sampler print into chunks, made some heart blocks, got a couple of odd sized Broken Dishes blocks out of the off-cuts of the hearts, and created three dozen 4 Patch blocks. (Those are some Halloween ribbons I picked up last month tacked to the left side of my design wall. Still haven't figured out what to do with them exactly.)

I feel like I still have a long way to go before I'll be able to put together a quilt of any size. Those patches for 4 Patch blocks sure make great leaders and enders though! (The 4 Patch blocks you see pinned to the wall are actually two stacks of ten and one stack of five.) The hardest part is trying to decide which fabrics to cut up for patches and which ones to leave in longer strips for strata or borders later on.

There's a fairly short deadline for this project: November 15. I think that will help to keep me from stalling out on it. Well, that and the purpose of the project. The trick is to stay focused. My own flannel quilt may not get tied very soon after all!