Friday, January 15, 2010 at 10:00AM The itch that just won't quit
Since my Christmas heroics, I have found myself itching to start another quilt. Luckily, I have far more fabric than finished quilts, so sourcing material for said quilt isn't a problem. My biggest obstacle when sewing is actually sitting down to do it. I think too much and put too much pressure on myself to do everything right. I was bored and irritable yesterday - it was a gray, dull day where my major source of entertainment was watching Gracie wake from a dead sleep and immediately go into high alert every time heaps of snow fell off the roof. That was only fun for about two hours, so I dug out some fabric.
I bought 96 4" x 4" squares of Anna Marie Horner's Chocolate Lollipop fabric line from eBay mid-2007. (I know this only because I have the PayPal packing slip in front of me.) I had no idea what I was going to do with the fabric, but it was only $15 and I thought it might be fun. At the time, I hadn't even finished a quilt, nor really even knew how to go about it.
So I sorted my squares into lights, mediums and darks. Fortuitously, I had four prints in each group. Then I made big nine-patch blocks.
The original block.This block has darks in the four corners, mediums in between, and a light in the middle. I alternated the groupings for each of my 10 blocks. (Note: While I made 10 blocks, I only used nine. One of my cuts was waaaay off, and it turned out nine blocks worked out much better than 10. It was either a 3x3 or 2x5, and really, who wants a 20" wide quilt?)
Then I cut the nine-patch block in half.
Cut squares.
Then I had to decide how I wanted to position each of my four squares. I'm not sure why, but I didn't even test the traditional change, turning each one a quarter turn in the same direction (which, I think, would make the block layout the same no matter which way you turned it). Instead, I tried these:
From left - Top: Options A and B. Bottom: C and D.I ultimately went with Option D. When I was sewing together my squares, I always oriented them by the location of the tiny blocks on the second row of squares.
A little more sewing and pressing, pressing, pressing, and...
Ta-da! A finished quilt top. Due to the limited amount of fabric I had, it's just a little dude, about 30"x30". Too small even for a lap quilt, but a nice baby or Gracie quilt. Or just something pretty to look at. I think I'll use deep brown for the binding and maybe that mustard for the back. I'm not really a mustard kind of girl, but it's awfully satisfying to work out of my color comfort zone. And from my stash.
Reader Comments (1)
That is so cool! One of these years I'll try it, too...