Scrappy Squirrel is a quilter’s superhero, really. She digs into the deep stash and finds new and fun projects that appear at the speed of a sewing machine going pedal to the metal. It started out as a simple chore in the sewing room, clear off a pile of stuff that had accumulated on top of a set of drawers. There was a shoe box with fabric in it, a bag of bonus hsts from Summer Solstice (circa 2014), two large blocks made in a class (circa 2005?) and a Hawaiian quilt block from earlier 2000, parts of a storm at sea, and a bunch of triangles cut from strip sets.

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After much head scratching, I remembered where they were from. In early 2000, I was part of a yahoo group that did various block swaps and group efforts. These blocks came from one of them, the project was to make a strip set of a bunch of strings 18″x 8″ (I think) and cut them into HSTs and attach them to solid triangles. Somewhere along in the past twenty years, I cut them into triangles of the pointy kind and made a few hexagons, and abandoned them in the box. I put them on the design wall, trying to randomize, but it was too eclectic, and kinda ugly. Hmm. I looked at them for a while and that’s when Scrappy Squirrel showed up. Bonnie Hunter was the answer, the quilt on the cover of her book String Frenzy , Serpentine Web. It has lots of triangles and was the ultimate in scrappy goodness. I grabbed the book and looked at the pattern, Yellow, lots of yellow, would it work with these uglies? I had three yards of yellow solid in the stash, yeah, not too bad. The center kite shape, didn’t I have an Accuquilt die that was this shape, yes! The die was slightly longer than the one from the pattern, but I could make it work. I cut a pile of newsprint triangles, yay, paper piecing.

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I made one block, it was fairly easy to do using the triangles and the precut kites, most were 6 seams, square up, and done. I like it, then I grabbed the bin of strings I had ironed this past summer, lots of colors and prints and oldies in there. I was off and running. The former orphans were used up in no time and the pile of strings is being chipped away at. The pattern calls for 50 or so blocks and each block has four kites, I have 10 here. I’m thinking maybe thirty whole blocks, there are half blocks to complete the rows for a throw size.

Today I will do the dog bed covers that Scrappy Squirrel distracted me from yesterday. Really.

Be Kind.