Finished Or Not Fridays: Embarking on a "NewFO"

Linking up to another edition of "Finish Or Not Fridays" hosted by the "Hostess with the QOV Mostess" Alycia of the Alycia Quilts - Quiltygirl blog!  This time I've got one for the "...Or Not!" category although I will link back in a few weeks with the finish.

Years ago, Barbara Stanbro of the Cat Patches blog used to host a monthly linkup called "NewFo" which challenged you to share a new project that you started.  It was an interesting twist on the linkups that focus on sharing UFOs that you have finished up.  Despite having the usual multitude of projects in the hopper right now, I did have a very good reason to start yet another one.

I have my MIL, a fellow quilter, for my Christmas Kringle giftee again this year.  Last year I got her a quilt kit, a quilty mug and made a mug rug to go with it.  This year she asked for some notions which have already been purchased:

This is just a peek since I'm not sure if she has figured out how to read my blog!

When we visited her back in October, she and I had a conversation about "scrappy quilting".  I taught my MIL how to quilt and she has always perferred working with "big pieces" (nothing smaller than a 5" charm square) and in a controlled pallette.  She generally gravitates towards projects that call for only a few colors and then uses one fabric in each of the required colors.  However, she had worked on two projects in recent months that have pushed her a bit past her controlled fabric boundaries.

She is a huge fan of Jenny Doan and the Missouri Star Quilt Co. YouTube projects and has made a few of them already.  Back in August, she fell in love with Jenny's "The Big Star" project and made that one up.

My MIL has been trying to focus on working solely from her stash and this was the first time she had to challenge herself to start a project by figuring out what pieces she had in the amounts required and then make choices to coordinate unique pairs of fabrics together for each star and balance those choices and their placement in the quilt as a whole.  It was a real challenge for her but with a little help from me, she picked her fabrics and got the top pieced together and was reasonably happy with the outcome.  I think she'll like it even more once it's quilted --- complete finishes always tend to look even better than they did as just tops (IMHO)! 

She is also a member of a guild and in a "destash swap" got a few Block of the Month blocks already pieced along with the complete set of the BOM patterns.  She will have to make up the rest of the blocks to have enough for a completed project.  One of the rulers I bought for her Kringle gift is a specialty one that will help her make the pieced units for one of the remaining blocks.  The blocks that are already done were made up in a controlled pallette of Black, Navy, Gray, Dark Tans, Gold and Cream but with all the fabrics a scrappy mix within those colors.  During our visit, we shopped for more fabrics within the color pallette  (not her usual colors so none except the Gray and the Cream were in her stash) and that will add even more "scrappiness" to the finished set of blocks.

So project by project, she is getting more comfortable with the idea of "working scrappy".  She has often liked the quilts I have made and especially liked the Bonnie Hunter "En Provence" top I finished.  She doesn't think she'll ever be able to work that scrappy though!   I, on the other hand, have always loved the "everything but the kitchen sink" variety of scrap quilt so working scrappy was "in my blood" so to speak.  When I look at quilt designs, if they are not already scrappy, I think about whether they would work that way either with a scrappy mix of fabics within the colorway or if they would still work taking the "kitchen sink" route.

Recently I happened on an old Moda Bake Shop "recipe" from back in 2016 and saw an opportunity to make a quilted comment on the topic for both of us.  Even better, it was designed by Vanessa Goertzen of Lella Boutique, a pattern and fabric designer I really like for the color pallettes she uses.  I have her Frivols tin (#9) that I hope to make up one of these days --- or maybe not since like Jelly Rolls and Fat Quarter bundles, these are just so cute staying displayed as they are!

The Bake Shop recipe as offered is for a lap quilt which is what I'll make for me.  For my MIL, I plan to make the same quilt but half size to give her as a wallhanging for her sewing room as the final piece of her Kringle gift.  I made her a walhanging all the way back in 2008 when she still lived here in New York and she still has it hanging in her sewing room today!

The pattern and the only pictures I still have of it which are in my journal.

I'm hoping this new wallhanging will inspire her as she continues to try working on scrappy projects in the future.

Of course, "S" is for Scrappy!

Once again, this is just a peek of what I've got so far.  I'll share more of it and the link to the recipe once I've got the whole thing made up and in the mail.  I'm hoping to make the U.S. Postal Service early mailing deadline on the 14th so I'm going to have to really focus to get this done!

Don't forget to go over to Alycia's to see what everyone else either got started, worked on or finished this week!