Slow Sunday Stitching - December 14, 2025 AND starting the pieced back for the 80s quilt

It's been a busy week; this coming week is finals for my homeschooled grandson and then winter break starts Friday.   End of term assignments - ugh.  I thought I was done with those twenty plus years ago when my son finished school!  I am keeping up with the last month of the Daily Temperature Log as we bounce back and forth between an extended Autumn and full-on Winter!   We had our first snow, though it didn't stick around for long.  Then Tuesday, it got up to 62 degrees F / 16.6 C.   

I'm also keeping up with the 100 stitches per day on the Mead Dragon, but the rest of the crafting time this last week went into quilting.   I'm still working on "It was the 80s" (pictures of the finished top here).  The plan was always to do an improv style pieced back for this one to use up all of the blocks from the original sampler quilt.   

So, using the tutorial on making an "After-Quilt" from Karen Brown "Just Get It Done Quilts" (link to her YouTube channel), I laid out the remaining materials and took inventory.  I started with identifiable blocks and components of blocks.

There are eight large blocks (finished size is 12 inches) remaining from the original top, some mini 9-patch blocks (3 inch finished size) and four patches / pinwheels (finished size 5.5 inches).  Plus there's an extra strip of 2.5 squares (2 inches finished) and the chunk I cut off the side of a 12-inch crumb block to replace an area of unassuming plain squares in the original "Solstice" layout from Pat Slone.   When I made the EPP section of the top, I made an extra rosette (and a random extra background hexi for some reason).

design wall is just tacked up, my son needs to mount the frame

As far as materials I can use for the backing, this is the remaining yardage; size is from a full yard WOF down to a scant fat eighth.   I really want all of the bright rose and pink out of the stash, so using all of that up is a priority.   So the plaid and everything in front of it needs used first.

There were lots of extra strips cut for this quilt and there's a stack of all of the mitered sashing from the original quilt, so I divided that up into three piles - strips 3 inches and up, strips approximately 2.5 inches, strips approximately 1.5 inches.   There's a small stack of squares ranging from 2.5 to 4 inches and a couple stacks of half square triangles (mostly the offcuts from the miters on the original sashing and not all the same size!)

And finally, there's a bunch of true scraps.  Strings less than 1.5 inches or wonky, small squares and potato chip rectangles (2 inches and less), little HSTs from 'stitch and flip' corners and some random tiny or odd shaped 'crumbs'.   Plue the rest of the old sashing and a couple of false starts of backings when I thought I might hand quilt this in the 'quilt as you go' style.  

What a mess - but at least it's a somewhat organized mess LOL.   The next step is to take all the bias strips I cut this week and make the binding.   I like to make the binding right after I get the top done to be sure I use up the larger bits of remaining yardage.  In this case, I used up almost all of the blues for a scrappy but color-controlled binding.  You can see up in the yardage picture that there's not a lot of blue yardage left!  

I'm having a lot of fun puttering around with fabric again. Linking up with the SSS crew (this week's roundup) - inspiration and accountability!