I finished sewing a Quiltmaker project recently (from gorgeous Red Rooster fabrics) and had a bunch of patches left over.

I decided to play around and see what happened. The most obvious thing was to sew the rectangular patches together.

I made three strips like the one above.

I knew I wanted to use this fabric for some sashing. I love those little birds!

I sewed them together and liked what was happening:

I trimmed it up (no stressing over the irregularities) and started auditioning other possibilities.

Eventually decided against the red polka dots. A little too intense.

Landed here. I have an idea for the edge treatment, but first I’ll quilt the whole thing as a rectangle.

I love quilt basting spray for small quilts like this. I use just a few safety pins. I treated this as a practice piece for machine quilting. I tried all kinds of different ideas and it was really fun and relaxing. Here’a side shot of some clamshell-type quilting in the borders. It’s freeform, no marking and no stressing. I used pink thread.

Now I take the plunge: freeform cutting of the edges into soft, flowing curves.

I love it!  It’s just what the doctor ordered. In my next post, I’ll share a great tool for cutting bias binding strips, because of course on a curvy edge, bias binding works best.