Every year Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville Quips & Snips has Leader & Ender Challenges and I’m into this year’s. What’s a Leader & Ender? Well, I’m going to send you over to her blog to read about it and while you’re there you might want to check out her scrap busting organization techniques and quilts.

I’ve decided to do the Checkerboard Rail Fence but instead of 1-½” squares I’m doing 2-½” squares and strips for my rail fence. I want to make a king size quilt for my bed, and I thought making the blocks 12” instead of 6” finished would help me make and finish the quilt. I do love Bonnie’s rendition and one day I may have enough scraps to make one completely from my stash but I don’t yet. I have plenty of white, white on white and white prints for the checkerboard but I may have to buy some more black prints.

For the rails I’m doing all the colors of the rainbow except the last rail of each block is going to be red. I don’t use a lot of red, I’m more of a blue/purple person but I thought I’d try something different. Like the checkerboard, the red will travel throughout the quilt in the same way.

I plan to work on this project at an upcoming quilt retreat. I’ve found that having a simpler project at retreats works best for me. There’s a lot of talking and activity, so I get up and down from my machine to look at what other people are doing or to help out with a variety of things. I’m looking forward to retreat this year and all the people that are going to be there. We’ve increased in numbers from last year from 20 up to 45! My next blog post will be about the retreat and how much fun we had!

Happy Quilting!

Camille