I went down to my sewing room yesterday with the intention of tidying up a few containers, and then starting something with my nice new fabric. The weather is no longer freezing cold, so if I'm going to make a flannel quilt it had better be soon, or the winter weather will be over and I won't need flannel for another year. We really only get a few weeks of winter here, it's not enough for me.

In one of the containers I found a pile of 6" Shoofly bloks in blacks and shirtings. I dimly remember making these about 4 years ago, intending to set them with red squares. It was all a bit dramatic for me though, so I packed all the bits away and forgot about them. As I looked at them yesterday I thought, What if I used blue instead....Obviously that was a good idea, because I dropped all my other plans and sewed on this all day and into the night. I made the centre piece with the blocks, thinking I would be satisfied with a hired-man's-quilt arrangement, but it was just too long and skinny, so I added the Stacked Brick borders to widen it. It's still only large single bed size, but I really like it.
I concentrated on using blue fabrics that were scraps and needed to be culled from the FQ drawers. I totally used up most of them, and there is only a small amount of the shirting left that I used in the small border. Great Stashbusting Effort!! The border fabric is almost gone too, that will be shifted to the drawer for smaller lengths and cut up to go in the next blue scrap quilt. I do love whittling down those border lengths, sometimes it seems that they just won't go away, no matter how much you use them.

On some blogs people list the music they are listening to; this quilt was made entirely to the strains of Handel's Messiah, and Maddy Prior's album of hymns, Sing Lustily And With Good Courage. I like sacred music, anything from 13th Century Carols to early American folk hymns, and classical masses. I like the beautiful music and soaring voices, but I also love the down-to-earth voices of the folk singers, and the authenticity of them. One lifts me up, and the other keeps me grounded.