A nice side effect of tidying the fabric stash

A few weeks ago I started sorting out my fabric stash. Ironing things. Folding large pieces neatly. And cutting up smaller pieces into a few basic sizes for future scrap quilts.

As I’m sure other creative folks have discovered, when you just start looking through your materials you get inspired to do things. I found myself grouping fabrics together and brainstorming things I could do with them.

At the same time, I heard about a patchwork pattern called Disappearing 4-patch. I’ve done the Disappearing 9-patch a couple of times (most recently for my mom’s quilt) and decided to check it out.

I made one block. I stared at it for a few days.

I really like it but wondered how it would look as part of a larger piece. After all most quilts are an exercise in tiling and/or tessellation.

A friend of mine likes the runner I made her for Christmas so much she’s still using it. She likes blue. I was using blue fabric. I made a couple more blocks, thinking they could be a not-Christmas runner.

I played with different settings. I decided that particularly for a long thin piece, this block looks better set diagonally.

I cut things. I made triangles.

I found another piece of fabric with similar blues in it for the backing, and a leftover piece of batting:

And then I started quilting. I really didn’t have much of a plan.

I started with the edge triangles and my walking foot. 7 lines of stitching filled the triangle.

Then I did the central square starting at the outside. I decided to stop after 7 lines of stitching and then added one line of stitching around that central tiny square.

Because of the way I set the blocks, the outside squares are missing a corner so I started at the edge of the tiny square and quilted 7 lines of stitching going outward.

Here’s a closer shot of the quilting:

There wasn’t enough of the dark blue fabric to bind it so I found a couple of strips of that mid-blue semi-solid for the binding.

I’m really pleased with how this turned out.