One blue patch, one blue quilt

 Hi everyone, and a happy 2023! I can't believe we're that far into the 21st century, yet here we are, almost a quarter of the way through. Yikes! We had a very exciting holiday without power for three days, but it was festive nonetheless. I hope yours was restful and peaceful.

Before we get too far into today's story, here is a picture of a little blue table topper that I finished this week and am counting as a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project for this year. (Bonus: it's a Project Quilting project, too!)

 

 

Isn't it cute? I am so thrilled with this, not least because it used ALL of my pre-cut blue squares from the 2-1/2 inch bin. Every one of them. I even had to cut a couple extra. There are 144 blue squares in this little topper, which is 24 inches square.

 

 

How did I come to make this cutie? I was looking around the sewing room and considering projects for the rainbow scrap challenge for this year when I took a break to look around at blogland and see if anyone had posted their ideas yet. This is when I happened upon Kim at Persimon Dreams and Project Quilting. I've never done Project Quilting because it goes too fast for me, especially at the beginning of a new semester. This week's prompt was "one," and the idea for this little quilt came to me immediately, all at once. It helps that the blue bin was right there, if you know what I mean.

 

 

 

One patch, one color! It works. Once I started putting the squares together this went really fast, and I found just enough time to quilt it and give it a quick machine binding. And did you notice that it's quilted in concentric squares? Fast and easy, my favorite kind of quilting.

 

 

As I said, all those blue squares got used up and I could not be happier. My goal for the RSC this year is to finally get some of those bins completely emptied. I know that won't happen in reality, but after seeing what I could pull out of the green scrap bin last year I think I have a good shot at cleaning some things out. Some of those scraps are very old and I am just tired of them, so they may make it to a different kind of bin if they don't get used up.

So, I plan to make a bunch of table toppers or small quilts this year, just to use those bits up. I need to throw out some of the smallest pieces. Why do I save the tiny things? I also have a couple of block projects for the RSC this year, but I haven't finished any of those blocks yet. I was cutting diamonds earlier and making a real mess of it, but I'm going to give it one more shot, I think.

Everyone have a wonderful first full weekend of 2023! I will be off to a conference this weekend, so here's to learning a lot to start the year. Happy stitching, everyone! 

Sharing at the Project Quilting linkup at Persimon Dreams, soscrappy for RSC23 (can you believe it?), Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished or not Friday, and the Quilting, Patchwork, Applique.