Selvedge Star

Hi, friends!  And happy February to you!

What's this, you ask?  A new quilt?  Yes!  Some years ago (I don't even want to try to count), I started saving selvedges.  When I'd buy fabric, or I'd pull fabric out of my stash to use in something, I'd tear off the white printed selvedge and toss it into a tote bag that hung on the back of the door to my studio.  Before I knew it, I had a very full bag.

And one day, in the mood to sew something mindless and soothing, I pulled out some muslin, cut it into 14-inch squares, and started sewing down the selvedges to create selvedge fabric.  I didn't know why, but it just seemed like something I could work into a project.  I found that sewing selvedges down, one after another, was remarkably fun. 

I'd bring my selvedge bag along on sewing get-togethers and retreats, and spend some time sewing more selvedge fabric.  Over the course of maybe 18 months, I'd sew selvedge fabric in odd moments.  I was accumulating a satisfying stack of selvedge squares.

And what to do?  I started without a plan, and made the basic Sawtooth Star you see in the center.  I was delighted.  And for a while I figured I'd make a bunch of those and have a star quilt.  I poked around to get selvedge quilt ideas.  I started a Pinterest Board of selvedge ideas.  But somewhere along the way, I decided that doing different things would be more fun, which led to a bunch of sketching and even setting up some medallion layouts with Electric Quilt.  So I had a plan.  And a stack of selvedge fabric.  And a whole lot of red scraps.

You see what resulted, finally.  This past week, I was off at a quilt retreat, and putting this all together was my #1 project.  It was the first time I'd laid out everything on a design wall, so it was exciting to see it go from a design on paper to the real design in fabric.  I so enjoyed putting it together.  It makes me happy -- all that red! All those words and selvedges to look at!

As luck would have it, the challenge theme for the next retreat is Words/Text/Fonts. I think I'm all set!  Now to get it sandwiched and quilted... and to decide what to do about the remaining selvedges I have in that tote bag...