Just me and my SIS

A few months ago, Lazy Sister Sue and I embarked on our third sister swap - where we pick a quilt pattern, swap a selection of fabric, and then each make our own quilt. This year we included our "adopted" sister Jill, and called it the "Sister Initiation Swap" or SIS for short.

This year the pattern is 16 Patch and Pinwheels from MaryQuilts.com - and the decision was made that we would swap white/light strips and each add in our own darks.

While collecting my white/lights (mostly whites) out of my stash and from a few shop hops, I pondered long and hard about what darks to add. I had finally used up all but a teeny bit of Wonderland, so that choice was out. I had some orientals - which looked nice with my whites, but held off on cutting them as I wanted to see what fabrics Sue and Jill sent. Scrappy was another option - and with scads of 5" "charms" and 2 1/2" strips in my bins - it was pretty tempting.

And then the strips arrived. Regrettably I did not take a photo of them prior to cutting - but lets just say that the selection was "eclectic" - not as many whites as I had - and some really fun lights with different distinctive designs on them.

Still stumped on the darks - I started to cut out the lights one night when I was in a cutting mood, figuring I could at least get that ready and set them aside.

I cut and I cut and I cut ... and I soon realized that we (Sue) had WAYYY overestimated how much fabric we each needed to swap. I had cut all of the fabric needed for the 16 patches AND the pinwheels - and still had nearly half the strips left over!

I will say that again... nearly half the strips left over.

Hmmm.... half..... is your brain going where mine went????

I started looking at the strips again - very carefully - and realized about 50% were WHITE and about 50% were beige/not white... and that, with the addition of a very few extra strips from my stash, I could do this ENTIRE quilt just from the strips we swapped...making a subtle light summery quilt from "Just me and my SIS"... and nothing else (well...not counting potential borders and binding and backing... but you know what I mean).

I've kept this secret from Sue and Jill until now... I wanted to see how it laid out.

So ... pardoning the poor lighting that does not do it justice really....here is the layout of "Just me and my SIS":