Mile-a-Minute Quilt: On the Road to the Mountain

Sometime back, in 2015, I believe, I started sewing a quilt using a type of patchwork known as "mile-a-minute".  Basically, it was sewing an assortment of scraps to each other until one has made a big enough piece of pieced fabric to cut out a block of a preferred size.  These blocks are then sewn together to form the quilt top that is very similar to a crazy quilt.  It is called "mile a minute" because it was supposed to be a very quick way to piece a quilt top, although I didn't find it to be all that quick, myself.  But, I figured it was a good way to use up some of the scraps I had accumulated - the pieces of fabric that were too small and odd shaped to be used in other quilts but which I was loathe to toss because, well, tossing fabric is just not something I can bear to do!

I spent several days sewing blocks of scraps together.  My two bottomless baskets of scraps were plonked on the big dining table, along with my sewing machine, cutting mat and box of thread and I set up the iron and the ironing board next to my table, as each time a piece of fabric was sewn on, it needed to be ironed out before sewing the next piece to it (and this is where I found it to be most time consuming - as a rule, I rarely iron each and every time I sew a seam!).  Soon, the fabric scraps overflowed the baskets and onto the table top as I pulled out different scraps, and some spilled to the floor!  A much delighted Dancer, who was, of course, ever ready to lend a helping paw, would rearrange the piles of scraps and take naps on top of them, etc.  The whole place resembled one big MESS, but Dancer and I spent many happy hours, sewing.

Then, I put it aside for some reason.  I don't quite know why - most probably, I needed to tidy up the table for some reason.  The pieces I patched became yet nother "work in progress".  I mentioned it in a post on Works in Progress in February, 2016.

Mile-a-Minute Quilt Blocks

When Bushlady likened my cancer treatment to climbing a mountain, I decided to make a quilt I called my Mountain Climbing Quilt.  And I decided to incorporate the already in progress Mile-a-Minute quilt patches into the Mountain Climbing quilt, because, although I knew what I wanted that mountain to represent, I couldn't quite focus on it at the time.  On any given day, I could only focus on the steps I had to climb that day - the hour-long drive to the clinic, the 3-4 hours long chemo treatments which stretched longer, sometimes, due to the waiting time at the clinic, the drive back, the repeat visits on subsequent days for injections and hydration treatments, the nausea, the lack of appetite, the trips to the lab for blood work, the need to depend on others because I was unable to do certain things, etc.  All I could manage was mindless piecing of scraps of fabric to make 6 inch blocks which I attached with strips of solid colored fabric to each other to form long rows.  So, that's what I did, until I had pieced 96 blocks which I proceeded to sew into 8 rows of 12 blocks each.

Eventually, I began to sew the mountain.  In my mind, the way I had envisioned it, I had a quilt with a central panel containing the mountain and the mile-a-minute blocks surrounding it.  But, quilts evolve as they grow, piece by piece, block by block.  At least, my quilts do.  What I had envisioned was not working out the way I had planned.  The mile-a-minute blocks didn't really go with the mountain quilt block!  They demanded to be featured in a quilt of their own!  That's right, it was going to be not one but TWO quilts!

I have been working on both quilts these past couple of weeks!  Both tops are more or less completed, but I have to attach the final borders and buy the quilt batting and back and bind them.  But, in the meantime, I want to share the Mile-a-Minute quilt top:

Mile-a-Minute Quilt Top

I am calling it "On the Road to the Mountain"!

Another View

Dancer has given it his seal of approval, while it was still in progress, before all the rows were sewn together:

Dancer Approved!

Every single scrap is what I had in my stash!  Including the purple used in the setting; there's just enough of the purple fabric to put a border on the top and bottom.  All the thread is also what I had on hand - some of it was from my mother's thread collection!  I have a purple bed sheet that was given to me, that I might use for the backing (because purple is my color, as you know).  All I really need to buy for this quilt is the batting.  Unless I decide to use the blanket I have on my bed, already.  It is a twin/full blanket which just covers the top of my queen size bed, but that is just how big the quilt top is, right now.