My quilt “Spare Change for the Better” began with a clean up day in my Stitch Studio. Once in a while, I need to celan up my Stitch Studio. Recently, I had worked on several projects, one after another, with no clean up time in between. So, there was no “going forward” on the next project until this room was straightened out!

I had been thread painting and making small embellished quilts, fabric books and purses, so there were lots of little stacks of things and random baskets of scraps all over the place that needed to be dealt with. As I began to order and bag the scraps, I began to gather some of the autumn shades together and got the idea for a scrap quilt. I went on a tangent! I started to think about this fabric as spare change…the kind of money that you put into a big glass jar until you have enough to really do something with it. Well, there was enough of it to make an interesting quilt.

It was time for a little change in the Stitch Studio. I had been doing tiny intricate things and, now, I wanted to stitch straight lines and make something big and simple. It was a change of season and I needed a change.