Hi, all! Scraps, scraps everywhere - they can really consume you, can't they? But every so often, it's nice to have a finish, and be able to look at it and know that you took something that could have been thrown away and turned it into something beautiful. You may have seen this post about my Long Time Gone quilt... ...and today, I'm happy to say that now I can add Gypsy Wife to the (nearly) finished column! I went back and looked through my pictures, and found this one, dated August 8, 2017. That was the day that I started Gypsy Wife, a Jen Kingwell pattern. The fabrics are Latitude batiks by Kate Spain, and were a wonderful and unexpected gift from Kate herself. I came home one day to an enormous box on my doorstep, filled with scraps of the line before it even came out, along with a note from Kate saying SURPRISE! I divided them up into cool and warm colors, pressed and sorted them into these tubs, and started on Gypsy Wife. The blocks have been finished for a while, but trying to find time to set them into the background strips was hard to do, with so many projects going on. However, last week I decided that it was time to put those blocks together, AND I DID! Bear with me, because I've got a lot of pics! Isn't it gorgeous? I love the way it looks like the blocks are floating on the vertical strips. And even though it was windy, I wanted to get a stained glass shot (or two or three...) I tried to use mostly warm colors in my blocks, with cool tones as the backgrounds. Then I used all cool tones as the background vertical strips. This quilt has a nice variety of blocks, and is a great way to learn to piece well. There are no paper pieced blocks in this quilt, either. Hooray! I made one mistake in this quilt - well, at least one! - as I found as I was piecing the last section that one of the blocks I had left wasn't what was called for in that space. But by then, I wasn't going to go find where I messed up earlier and take it apart, so I made it work. At least I'll be able to identify it as mine and no one else's! It was such a rarity to have sunlight, I even love this shot with the sun glare! One final shot as the sun sets in the west. And don't think that this top is going to languish on a rack waiting to be quilted - I ordered another wool batt which arrived today, and the back is made and ready to go. I need to quilt one more ministry quilt to reach a self-imposed finish goal before I load Gypsy Wife on the frame, so I should get to start on it tomorrow sometime. I can't wait to try out some new designs that I picked up from Christina Cameli's new book, Step-by-Step Texture Quilting! I still have scraps, scraps everywhere - even in the Latitude tubs - button I have two beautiful scrap quilts that I will be keeping for myself. And I'm so inspired to keep making scrap quilts! Hugs! Sarah