Back in the Red & White saddle

I just spent a beautiful and productive day in my sewing room. It was so long in coming. August was a fun summer blur and then September came and went in a back-to-school frenzy. I haven't been able to squeeze in a solid two hours of sewing time and I needed it!

No better way to get back in the saddle than diving into my monster red & white project. Here is some of today's piecing progress:

This is a project called Just Takes 2 put together by Sentimental Stitches and Dear Jane in honor of the fabulous Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red & White Quilts exhibit held in New York City last year. Two color quilts are eternally popular and this project pulls blocks from all of the quilts in the Red & White exhibit into a HUGE sampler. It's basically a block-of-the-month project on steroids. I decided to stick to the red and use different shirting fabrics for my backgrounds.

Someone thought this was a good idea in January (Tracey!) and red is my favorite color so it seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, 75 blocks into it (I think I'm behind by about 20 at this point) and still three more months to go! I can't even begin to think how I'm going to quilt this sucker. I'm just trying to make it to the finish!

One of the great things about this project is that it has made me appreciate more than ever the skills of quilters past. RESPECT! I mean, no rotary cutters, no Omnigrid rulers, no Ibuprofen, etc., etc. There's everything in this project from hand piecing, to applique, to regular piecing, to a never-ending amount of paper piecing. Tons of blocks that I have never even heard of, let alone tried before. Good learning experience!

The real test will be if red is still my favorite color by the end of this project!

Happy stitching,
Tonya