Preparing to QAIG

As I was making the previous QAYG (Quilt As You Go) project, I was making mental plans for the next one which would use up a huge roll of bright pink fleece and a quick 'n' easy muumuu/shift my MIL had left behind after a visit. She didn't want it back, it was too small for me, and it was made from 100% cotton. As it was a tad flimsier than quilting cotton, I was loathe to cut it up and put it in my regular stash, but I was also loathe to just throw it out. Instead, I gave it a home in the drawer with the pink fleece with the intention of combining the two some day.

The day(s) arrived. I needed another piecing project so I could keep Leadering-and-Endering (heaven forbid I treat those pieces as a "real" project with sewing time devoted solely to them!) Elaine's been having such fun with her QAYG projects, that I got the bug too.

From a large hunk of brushed denim-like fabric I cut as many 9-1/2" squares as I could (99) to use as foundations (instead of batting). I had tried using this as a backing a while back, but the more I unrolled it, the grottier it revealed itself to be. THIS was something in which it could be useful.

Next up was finding coordinating fabrics for the muumuu piece (the large leaf print). I needed large pieces because there was no way I would get 99 triangles from the muumuu, but smaller scraps would also be useful for strips/strings.

Blacks were easy--I had plenty of small pieces I was happy to cut into strips for this. The solid pink had to go--it's probably the oldest piece in my stash by now--decades old. The purplish/beige/pink piece on the left was another no-brainer. Although pretty, it was usually passed over for not being enough of one thing (pink? purple? light? medium?) Plus, it had metallic highlights, and I never know if those will flake, or scratch, or wash off.

The dark purple on the right looked nice, but did it look nice enough with everything else? As I was ironing it, something familiar came into view:

By golly, I do believe these were meant to be put together after all!

My fleece stash, other than the 5-6 yards of the pink, is quite sparse--mostly scraps, actually. There was a large-enough hunk of white to provide some triangles, and a black acrylic "stadium blanket" some companies like to give out as freebies that was happily sacrificed. After pulling all the white and black and gray fleece pieces and scraps I could find, it was obvious I was going to have to go to my bin of flannels to add variety and interest to the fleece side of this QAYG project.

It was also becoming obvious that this thing, if it truly was going to be 99 blocks big, was going to be as heavy as sin with that brushed-denim foundation. I started imagining the headlines: "Family Crushed by Donation! Quilting World Aghast! (Quilter sobs, 'I only wanted to give to those less fortunate than I.')" That would never do, so I swapped out the denim pieces for some 10" squares I had prepared from old sheets and donated curtains (not the devil cloth!!!) The denim will be used for string blocks of light-weight materials, not fleece and flannel.

Setting up the blocks in my next post. For "mindless sewing", this reversible-quilt technique sure takes a lot of careful thought and time!