Follow the yellow brick road

Ok, so there's no yellow and there's no road, but there is a bit of an Emerald City thing going on here. This is my as-yet-unquilted entry to the Pantone Emerald Challenge. I really want to use that fantastic Ikea fabric with writing for the backing, but my local Ikea is in the middle of a giant refit and the textile department is a shadow of its normal self. It's entirely possible that I will enter this as a quilt top rather than compromise and use something I'm not that keen on just to get it finished.

I haven't measured it, but it's 40 by 60 inches or thereabouts. The background is pieced from linen, muslin, regular quilting cotton and sheeting – I love the subtly different textures. The rules of the challenge say you can use any green plus one neutral, and I am really hoping that "several shades of creamy beige" counts as one neutral, although I like this so much that it wouldn't be the end of the world if it doesn't.

The more time I spend sewing this way the more I realise that it's all I really want to do. I've made plenty of quilts from patterns but somehow they never scratch that making itch. I'll always make them for other people, but from now on the quilts I make just for me are going to be more like this – sewn with no idea of what the end product will be. Selfish sewing, quilting without purpose. That's what lets my mind rest.