Once upon a time......

Once upon a time many years ago there was a quilter who bought a bunch of coordinating scrap strips and pieces.   Now this quilt was not one who could leave a group of scraps big enough to make a quilt suffering in the bowels of a scrap bin.   So when many years ago (more than 10 years ago) she came across a grouping of fall colored strips in lengths that ranged from 3" to width of fabric and were 3 1/4" wide.   With a grouping that was about an inch tall she just couldn't leave them in the scrap bin to feel like no one loved them so home they came with her.

But rescuing them from the scrap bin was one thing, actually knowing what to do with them was another thing altogether!   So for many years the poor strips languished in her voluminous scrap bins feeling neglected.  Several years went by before this poor quilter decided to use the strips in a triple flying geese paper-pieced block.   The pattern and tentative layout was designed, patterns printed out, fabric friends collected, and everyone was stuck into a big ziploc bag.   This bag was then stuck into a tote with lots of quilt friends and forgotten about for more years because the quilter just couldn't get into pp'ing the geese.

More years went by and the quilter was feeling guilty for not having done anything with the scraps unearthed them from the tote they had been living in for so many years.   Feeling a little scared after so many years with just their fellow kits, the scraps became a wee bit anxious when the quilter proceeded to put away the patterns that had been living with them.  What was she up to?  Did she no longer want them?

But then they grew lively as they realized that the quilter had brought 23 new friends for them to play with.   These friends were lovely groups of COC fabrics and soon there were a pile of new 'best friends' as all of the scraps paired up with a COC strip.

Having paired up and everyone was playing nicely together, the inevitable happened and blocks began to form as strip division occurred.

124 blocks later the strip division finally stopped and the scraps that once had been so lonely were now a part of a large family of blocks.   Having said goodbye to lost bits and pieces as they achieved their final size, the blocks were waiting to find out what would happen next to them.    Would they grow up to make their parent strips proud of them?   Would they be once again relegated to the depths of that dark tote their parents had talked about?

But wait, the quilter had a snow day and was working with a sketch to see it come to life.   She sorted the blocks, thoroughly mixed them up and put them into order.   Then introduced them to their new friend the sewing machine.    This new friend soon had them playing together in an orderly manner for the most part.   The quilter did have to stop once and work with a recalcitrant block who just did not want to play nicely to make it behave (aka frog-stitching).    Throughout the process the blocks were eagerly awaiting their turn to take part in the scene that was taking shape and were looking forward to seeing what the quilter was planning.

Gratitudes:
1.  Two snow days off of school to deal with the 12" plus of snow that fell over the weekend and a warm house to retreat to when it gets too cold to keep shoveling.

2. The street is plowed out so I can finally dig out from the 12-15" tall and 18" wide berm that the plow at the end of my driveway.