Stumbling across an old scrap of a favorite fabric is a trip back in time. To other quilts. To other aesthetic phases. Sometimes you’re super impressed with the consistency of your excellent taste over time…and sometimes it’s like finding an old photo of yourself in some bangin’ 90’s fashion.

Sigh.

Anyway, from time to time I’m going to post photos of scraps (featured in these very quilts you’ll be bidding on!) that were either plain old all-time favorites, or scraps that were significant in some way.

To kick off this celebration of great fabrics, let’s start at the beginning! The first picture in this post is of the absolute last remaining scraps of fabric from the very first quilt I ever made. That’s it. That’s all that’s left.

This dusty green tone-on-tone floral print was purchased in the fall of 1999 at Quilts by the Falls in Cannon Falls, Minnesota…the shop where I learned how to quilt. My teacher was a woman named Jane Peterson (pictured in the second photo, in the foreground wearing the indigo jacket…the background of the photo is the lap quilt she gave us for our wedding), and I will always be deeply grateful for the introduction she gave me to this amazing hobby. Jane taught a wonderful beginner’s quilting class where we all made 9-patch lap quilts. I remember that while Jane certainly encouraged us to do good work and learn how to do things correctly, she also made the process fun and didn’t over-stress perfection. She taught me the “riding by on a horse test.” As in, “if you were riding by on a horse, would you notice the mistake? No? Then let it go.” Right from the beginning, Jane made sure we were enjoying the process of quilting.

But why I picked the colors I picked, I’ll never know. I’ve never been a fan of whatever that green is. Yeesh.

Speaking of getting comfortable with NOT doing things perfectly, here’s a confession about my first quilt (final picture in this post):

I messed it up before I even really got started. It was supposed to be a simple, two-color 9-patch. Classic and uncomplicated…cream print with a green chain running through. But when I was cutting the fabric, I messed up. I cut big dusty green squares with a cream print chain runing through instead of the other way around. So I had to add in a 3rd color…the dark green border. Oh well. Nice to get that first big fuck up out of the way right from the get-go.

Look for those last scraps of dusty green in the bullseye quilts. You’ll have one of the very last pieces of where this whole wonderful adventure began!