Finally, a start!

At least 15 years ago, in an antique shop in Ligonier, IN, a little quilt top spoke to me. Judging by the indigo blues, deep reds, and other fabrics in the top, I could tell it was old (circa 1900). It was also tattered and a bit faded in places. But I thought it had potential and the price was right. I bought it with the intention of re-working it, just to play with the fabrics.
The little scrappy 9-patch on point quilt top sat in a corner of my sewing room until last year. It was time to do something with it. I took it along on an "up-north" quilting retreat as a "no-brainer" project. One afternoon I started taking it apart. Because it was hand-pieced (and a lot of the seams had already pulled apart), it wasn't too bad a job. One of my friends sat down to help and we quickly had it all in pieces.
The next step was to sort. Which pieces were too badly damaged to save and which ones were salvageable? Many of the pieces went in the trash (yes, I admit I did throw them away). The rest were pressed. This gave me another chance to examine them to see if they were worth putting back into the quilt.
I measured the squares from the 9-patches. I knew that I wanted to trim them down to have fresh edges to piece together. Once a good size was determined, and the squares trimmed, I then had to count them to see how many 9-patches I could make from what I had. The original quilt had 20 9-patch blocks, but I decided to only use 16 in my new project. I needed a few more little squares, so I cut some from my collection of old and reproduction fabrics.
Everything was cut, ready to go, and I had a plan. But it all got put away. Guess some other project was more important at the time. That happens to me a lot!!!