I Can't Stop

I can't seem to stop going through my scraps and stash to see how much I can use up. I found this Amish-style "cheater" panel (or as I've seen it called in some places, "convenience" panel) that I had bought for a couple of dollars at some sale held by another guild...at least five years ago. My initial plans for the panel was to use it to practice quilting on my mid-arm, which I did a couple of times, using water-soluble thread in the bobbin. That worked great because I could re-use the panel several times. However, after a couple of times doing that, I decided that it was really a waste to do all that quilting and then have it disappear when I dissolved the thread. And the water-soluble thread was expensive, too. Since then I've decided that practice quilting doesn't need to disappear -- it can be fine for many charity quilts (as long as it's not really, really bad quilting).

Once I found the panel, I pulled out a lot of scrap pieces of solids to use for a pieced backing. Here's what I came up with for that....

I like it quite a bit. As you can see below, it's just enough to fit...

Of course, if I was to give this to a machine quilter to quilt for me, I wouldn't give her such a small backing. But I can deal with it and make it work.