Project Quilting 17.1: A Clean Slate

Welcome to January and another season of Project Quilting! I was initially stumped by the theme for week one, A Clean Slate, so I went to my go-to spot for inspiration: typing random phrases into Google Images to see what comes up. I didn't use the words "quilt" or "quilt pattern" because I was looking for inspiration, not a pattern. It took a bit, but with a little tweaking of my search terms this little sprout appeared amid all the images of chalkboards. Once I saw it, I couldn't get it out of my head. I decided to combine it with the pile of low-volume scraps that were too small for my Blue Coin quilt and this was the result.

The rock in the picture is a large decorative boulder that came with our house. My kids take all of their first day of school pictures standing on it, so it also symbolizes a clean slate to me - the beginning of a new school year.

I made up my own paper piecing pattern for the sprout part, then used the remaining pieces of low volume to make it a larger rectangle. I did not really worry about the overall size because it's meant to be an art piece - I stopped when I ran out of scraps I wanted to use (you can see I restricted myself to pieces that didn't have any color on them for this particular project). To finish it, I brown-bagged the mini quilt because I didn't want it to have a "frame". My tutorial tells you to pre-quilt the back panel, but I skipped that step because this piece is so small. I free motion quilted around the sprout itself, then did random straight lines (that I marked with a hera marker) to finish the quilting.

While I was waiting for the challenge to be released, I did all the background fabric cutting for my next leaders and enders quilt, which is going to be a green scrappy version of Space Parade. I've been cutting the green squares over the past couple of months and it's fun to finally get to use them. This mini quilt was mostly paper pieced, so I only made two blocks, but the green in it might look a little familiar...

Does anyone else feel the pull to immediately use the fabric they just used in a different quilt? I never quite use it all up, but it feels like it happens to me a lot!

And that's a wrap on week one of Project Quilting for 2026! I'm linking up my successful finish at Project Quilting linky party - see you back here in two weeks!