I finished this block from Farm Girl Vintage on the last day of June.  (Do you believe me?)  Call it a late harvest.

One of my childhood memories is Dad’s garden.  He always tilled and fertilized, seeded and watered.  We loved helping plant seeds, but I especially liked picking strawberries with Mom and Dad.  We would bring in the small ripe strawberries (The ones that we didn’t  eat right off the plant) and rinse them in our stainless steel sink full of water.   They smelled almost as good as they tasted.  Strawberry shortcakes and on ice cream were the best!  I don’t remember how many years we kept our small strawberry patch.   Eventually we didn’t have it anymore.  The story goes that dad become allergic to strawberries, even the artificial ones…   Too much of a good thing?

This patched strawberry is the only harvest I had this year.  I pieced it from 2 1/2″ squares cut from my grandma’s stash… again.  I love that I am able to carry fabric elements from her stash across so many quilts.  This strawberry is pink, so not completely ripe.  It was fun to scavenge the fabrics, so I might have to make another one in reds.

My secret for managing small scraps of fabrics is my Sizzix Bigz dies.  I have basic squares in several sizes. It allows me to select scraps and then stack them to cut squares for my patterns all at once.  I can cut 6 – 8 layers at a time with the die.  Sometimes I have to trim a few strings that didn’t finish cutting, but it is faster than rotary or scissor cutting them individually.  I think, if I starched the scraps, they would cut more smoothly.

This block would be great in a table runner or top.  It might even be fun to change-up the colors to show a strawberry ripening, white / light green, pink, then vibrant red.. The only think we are missing is the dark green leaves and white flowers of the plant.  That would make a good quilting design!

My block for July will be the patriotic flag.  My stash of reds is not very big, so I might be adding some new fabrics that I picked up on my weekend road trip to Hamilton Missouri and MSQC with my mom!  It was a great way to spend a rainy day.  We shopped every quilt store, picked up some souvenir quilt T-shirts, fabric for projects, picked up our first Row-by-Row for the year, and ate at the local restaurant called “Blue Sage”.  I was surprised to see that a new bed and breakfast, Home Inn Hamilton,  opened up there too.   It might be a another great place to arrange unofficial retreats with some of my new quilting friends!