THE BIRTH OF A STASH QUILT . . .

This was REALLY fun, but when I started out, I had no idea where I was going. (Thank goodness for my makeshift design wall -- that now hangs over the cabinets in my sewing/laundry room -- when I'm not using washer or dryer, that is.)

A couple years ago, ladies at my church donated LOTS of fabric for charity quilt making, along with yarn for charity knitting or crocheting. I had made a few quilts at that time, but a couple months ago, I attacked those boxes of fabrics with a vengeance -- leaving me with at least the beginnings of about 30 quilts, sorted by color, theme, or whatever came to my mind at the time.

A few of those little stacks have been parked on my dryer for WAY too long, so this past week, I've been putting together several quilt tops with those stacks.

One of the piles had this adorable "monster truck" print. But there was way too little of it --and that in several small pieces--to really do the print much justice. There were only 3 whole trucks, and once I cut the fabric to get a the whole trucks, there was very little fabric left for anything else. I was able to cut a few 2 inch strips and three 3 inch squares.

So I "framed" those 3 trucks with coordinating fabric (in the middle, top left, and bottom right). And then I "mirrored" my framed trucks with enough more blocks to get some symmetry. (Oh, yeah, I did have to piece my bits of fabric for the fourth 3 inch block.)

I didn't know where to go from there, 'cause I thought that more blocks would just kind of muddy the whole thing and the trucks would get lost.

Then a light bulb went off. Why did it have to be blocks? Maybe I could just put strips between the blocks.

So I played around a while with several leftover fabrics and came up with this concept.

Tweaked it a little more and . . .

Voila: a fun quilt top!

I have a lot of the red border print that I'll use for the backing.

I'm hoping some little boy will find some comfort -- and smiles-- wrapped up in this one!