Playing in the scrap heap and cutting up

Instead of finishing up Swiss Mocha on the longarm Saturday so I can get the retirement quilt on there, I started pulling fabric for a new project. I found out that morning that our niece is having a little boy in July and I want to make him a quilt. 

This makes the 6th of the babies our nieces and nephews are popping out, but the first for which I'm making a quilt. All the others were born when I had lost my quilting mojo, so I'll make a quilt for each of the others one day in the not too distant future.

So back to the new project--I wanted to keep it simple and decided on a bullseye quilt. I'll be making 20 blocks, and decided I wanted to use blues for all of the backgrounds. After pulling those, I started to pull yardage out of my fabric cave for the circles, but then I looked down:

Corner view of cave with wicker baskets and notion wall

See the plastic bins on the bottom of the fabric shelves? Those are bins that hold most of my scraps; each bin represents a color. The wicker baskets have more scraps that haven't been sorted. 

I started digging in the scrap bins and had enough scraps to generate all the circles I needed without digging into yardage. Here are all the lovely circles:

And here are the blue backgrounds:

I know Accuquilt has introduced the new nesting circle and hexagon dies which make it easier to make bullseye style quilts, but I already have several of their circle dies, and have a way to make the blocks in a faster way (in my mind). I'll share that later.

Why the muddy colors? This particular niece grew up in FFA and raised goats and cows--and I just envision that this little tyke will be a bit of a cowboy. I want this to last him a few years and I didn't want it to be juvenile.

And my cave? It's just off of my studio and at various times in this home's history has housed a bar, a gun and ammo workshop, and maybe a kitchen. When the hubster renovated the studio for me a few years ago the space was being used for general storage. He completely gutted and ripped everything down to the studs, built the shelves and installed LED lighting. A sliding door (that also serves as part of the design wall) closes it off from everything else and the fabric is protected from light (except when I'm in there looking for it). I love it.

Other corner view of cave

Project bins next to neutrals

On Sunday, both Katrina and LeiLani popped over for a while. We haven't visited in ages. It's time for a Girlfriend quilting day.

I'm so glad my mojo is back.

Go quilt!