I made this quilt for the Modern Quilt Guild’s Super Scrappy Challenge, sponsored by American Patchwork and Quilting.

Improvisational work with scraps touches me in a way a planned design does not, but the work also makes me question my intuition. I’m not sure why some things work and others annoy me. In the beginning, I wanted to make lots of small log cabin blocks, but after making about a dozen I stopped because it felt like something I had seen many times before.

I moved onto strips of scraps. I chose them randomly from a large box of solid scraps. I tried not to cut any of the length of the scraps. When I pieced the long strips together, I loved the movement and the color combination.

I used almost exclusively thread from my mother’s sewing cabinet and I felt a connection to the past while creating this piece. I grew up in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, and I’ve often said I grew up “in the sticks.” The wonky sides make it real for me and create that organic feel I wanted.

It was not selected for QuiltCon so I’ll have to find another exhibit.