If Only I had Taken a Before Picture :-(

Yesterday after I posted, I grabbed all of that flannel I had thrown on the floor, and brought it down to the kitchen table. Yes, I have a cutting table in my sewing room, but although I have cleaned it off some in the last 24 hours, not nearly enough of it was cleaned off for this big of a project! I wish I had thought to take a picture of all of that flannel covering my table.

My flannels pretty much fit into one of three categories, grown-up, baby pastels, and baby brights. Mostly I had baby prints. I decided to take most of the printed flannel and cut it up for burp rags. Above is my mountain of burp rag pieces. I cut all of those last night.

I really didn't have a lot of grown up flannels. I had a remnant of the dart board flannel, the green basket weave print and a solid burgundy, both purchased from a thrift store, and the black that was left over from making my design walls. I had a couple pieces of white, and cut some up for this quilt, and some for the baby quilts. Since I had so few grown up fabrics, I cut everything to 6 inch squares, making sure to only cut just enough of the white squares. I had enough of the basket weave to cut it into strips for the border. This is just on the guest bed to see how many squares I needed. Swing Your Partner is still on my design wall.

Here is a close up of the fabrics. In the other picture, the dartboard fabric looks almost like a floral :-) The fabrics may not match completely, but good enough to get sewn together and out of here! I only have about a dozen squares left.

I already had a bunch of 4" flannel squares left over from another project. I like baby quilts to have smaller blocks, so I'm sticking mostly with four inch squares. For some variety for me, I also cut 2 1/2 inch squares and 1 1/2 inch strips so I could make the Chunky Churndash blocks from Bonnie Hunter's website, www.quiltville.com All of the remaining flannel I had is now cut up and piled in this pan. It took me all day to cut it all, and I probably shouldn't have cut for so many hours. I am, however, thrilled that all my flannel is cut up and ready to use! You can't tell in the picture, but some of these stacks of squares are almost 6 inches high. I should get several baby quilts of them.

I didn't count any of the squares, so I have no idea how many there are. I will just play with them on my design wall and when I come up with something I like, I'll sew it together! Good plan? Well, fun anyway. I'll try to use as many of the squares as I can in quilts, but when I'm done playing, if there are any left, I have someone I send my scraps to, and she'll get whatever I didn't use.

I have a few other quilts I want to get cut out. I really am just going to make as many quilt tops as I can in June, and start a quilting marathon in July. With the tops I already have made, and the flannel ones I hope to do, I should actually be able to meet my goal of donating 12 quilts this year. I know of women who donate a lot more per year than that, but I think this is a good goal for me, with all of the other things I do, and all the other quilts I make.

I am so excited to get this flannel sewn up and out of here. I have some extra room on my shelves now, so I can rearrange a bit, and move some fabric from the closet onto the shelves. Although I am sure I will buy flannel again now and then, if someone requests it, or if I want to back a quilt with it, I am pretty sure I won't ever have this much of it again. I was thinking about other categories I could use up, and probably not replace. I think next year I might concentrate on either printed panels, or gingham. Plenty of time to decide, as I definitely have enough to keep me busy the rest of this year!