She had me at "No Strings"

I really wasn't going to join anything. Nothing! Until I had some projects done. Then Stephanie posted this and THEN she started a Challenge.



I started by sorting all my scraps that I had thrown into this bin while cleaning up my sewing space. There are some big pieces in here - almost fat quarters - and some small ones - really small ones. The rest were designated as strips and put back in.


Then my sister and I started emailing and thought we would make ONE strip block a week for the year and get a quilt of some size out of it. I had some muslin already cut at 8 1/2 inches for a project I never did. . . so I made my first block.

Then, I had an idea.


A birthday placemat for my niece! Yay! I always struggle to figure out what to get her with her birthday so soon after Christmas. This year I was still looking through my patterns at Christmas for ideas to make her birthday gift.

This one took me less than a day! And I love the colours. I used 6 1/2 inch foundations which I trimmed to 6 inches. I picked out a whole bunch of strips that I liked for her, and kept using the cutoffs as I made the blocks. I knew with the 3 across, 2 down setting I wouldn't get a neat repeating pattern. I made 3 blocks on the diagonal and 3 straight across instead.


I kept the back plain and pretty.

Now I have one string project done and so - I joined the challenge!

Project/birthday gift number 2 is underway:)

You can click on the No Strings Attached button in my sidebar to get to the list of participants on Stephanie's blog.

With Joy,
Sarah Vee