"Whit Beyond Measure is Life's Greatest Treasure"

Hi Everyone,

I'm still here!  As of right now, though, I've packed up most of my quilting things from my tiny apartment.  I've finished what I started and it is nearly time to get busy at our new house, doing painting and such.

One of the projects that I finished was this month's Schnibble.  In case you don't know, there is a group of quilters here online who like to make the same pattern each month, and it is often a Schnibble pattern by Carrie Nelson.  This month, the selection was one of her Little Bites patterns instead.  She uses 5" charm squares for her Schnibble quilts, but for Little Bites, she uses the 2.5" candy squares.  Anyone who is interested in making the "assigned" pattern can do so and then send a photo (and a link if you blog) to Sinta at the Pink Pincushion or Sherri at A Quilting Life.  They have parades on the first of the month featuring all the quilts as well as announcing the next project.

The pattern for this month is called "Whit."  It requires making tiny flying geese.  I love flying geese, and making them smaller wasn't any problem for me.  Once made, you could place the geese into three different arrangements.  "Whit" is a word describing a small amount--Carrie uses synonyms of tiny bits for all of her Little Bites projects.  I love that!

This is my completed "Whit" quilt.

 I used some charm squares from a Minick and Simpson line which I cut down from 5" into  2.5" squares.  Sometimes I find it tricky to decide on a background color  to go with my charm squares.  It was especially difficult with this line.  It seemed that nearly half of the fabrics in the collection were tan or cream, then there were navy, red, and a medium blue.  I decided to pull out the medium blues and then used a medium blue solid for the background of my geese units.

In Carrie's version of this same quilt, she used an Essex Linen for the large background areas (the navy blue in my quilt.)  I have seen several different quilts being made with this linen, and it intrigued me.  The fabric is a blend of linen and cotton.  When I found some in Virginia, I got some yardage of two colors, navy and a natural/tan.  It being linen, is more "beefy" than cotton, but not hugely so.  I was really afraid it would ravel much more than cotton, but actually, the Kona was worse.

Once I had the top all together, I quilted it.  I would have liked to have quilted straight lines, but I don't have my walking foot with me, so I just did a small meander.  First I tried using navy thread, but it looked terrible over the geese, so luckily I stopped before I had done too much, but it still meant a lot of ripping.   I ended up using a dark gray--it isn't as noticeable on the navy or the geese.

Once I had the quilting complete, I began trimming it.  And then I realized that I had forgotten to put the outer border strips on!!!  It should have had 2" navy strips all the way around.  Good Grief.  Luckily, I looked at it and decided it was okay "as is."

While working on this project, I kept trying to think of a clever name, playing on the word, "whit."  I briefly considered substituting the "W" for an "S," as that word may have slipped out when I needed to rip out quilting AND when I discovered the missing border, but that  wouldn't be nice.  While I was stitching down the binding, suddenly this phrase popped into my head:  "Wit beyond measure is life's greatest treasure."  If you are a fellow Harry Potter fan, you will recognize it as the engraving on Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem.  I thought it very appropriate for this quilt if I changed wit to whit.  I especially like the "beyond measure" as mine is not the same measurements as Carrie's, since it is missing the border.

Meanwhile, today is THE DAY when we finally close on our house, so I'm really excited!  Have a wonderful day!

JoAnne