Snow Day

Hi Everyone,

It's another "snow day" here, although it is more of an "ice day."  This time, both of my nieces are over.  They did their online  schoolwork and now are doing "art."  It's always easy and fun to do art projects here at my house.  They wanted to sew, but are settling for construction paper, scissors, glue sticks, markers, etc.

Now that my computer is free, I can write this post!  If you remember last week I was mentioning that a new project interrupted my work on my big, complicated quilt.  As I explained, every member of our guild is asked to provide a kid's quilt,  They are taken to Camp Watcha-Wanna-Do, which is a camp for children who have been diagnosed with cancer or brain tumors.  Each camper is given a quilt to use and then take home.

While going through all of my fabric, I had already "assigned" some to this cause.  One group was all of my leftover moose and bear, etc. fabrics that I collected and used while in Alaska.  I haven't made an Alaskan theme quilt since.  (Did that stop me from buying a plethora of Hawaii themed fabric while in that state?  No, but I'm sensing future kid's quilts from that stash, too.)  One day I pulled them all out and looked over what I had.  I had a piece that had sort of preprinted squares, etc. on it.  You could use it as is, or cut it up.  I wanted to fussy-cut some of the motifs.  I had another piece which was a panel, only with long-ish rectangle pieces.  There was another with fussy-cutting possibilities, and then a bunch of fabrics with all-over moose and bear, woodsy prints, etc.    I gathered up a bunch of them and took them to the local shop to try to find a fabric to use with all of them.  This was not easy as some had neutral backgrounds, and there were golds, browns, dark greens, and reds in the mix.  I ended up choosing a light green fabric that played well with all of the others.  Luckily it didn't have flowers on it as I wanted to make a quilt for a boy.  (It's so easy to make girl quilts!)  I didn't have any idea what quilt I was going to make, but since there was only about 2 yards on the bolt, I bought it all.

At that point, I didn't have a plan, so I set everything aside.  I knew what I wanted:  a quilt with different size squares and rectangles, all sashed, that would fit together a bit like a puzzle.  At various times, I looked through my books and then one day I was on Pinterest, and I found just what I wanted.  I set out sketching the quilt.  I began with the larger squares finishing at 6", but that was too small of a scale.  I wanted to try something larger, but it was time to go to bed, so I had to leave it.  I hate leaving something when I'm in the middle!

The next morning, I leaped out of bed after the alarm went off at 5.  I went back to my graph paper and tried 9" squares next, and that was a bit too large,  8"  anded up being perfect so I drew it all out on paper.  I would need *' and 3.5" squares and other sizes inbetween  I began wondering if my panels and pieces would fit the size squares and rectangles for the pattern  so I took my sketch upstairs to my quilt room.  I grabbed the fabrics and YES!  they were going to work great.  I got right to cutting.  It was fun seeing what I could fussy-cut to the needed sizes.  I cut shapes from the all-over fabrics, too.  Pretty soon, I realized I needed to lay it all out so I could see if I was getting a good color-balance.  I cleared off my design wall and started laying it all out and cutting some more.  With a start, I realized I was an hour away from needing to be to my quilting group and I was still in my pajamas!  "Curses," I thought, "I have to leave my quilting to go to quilting!"  Haha.

So I got ready and went to my bee.  When I got home from that, I had about an hour before I had to run another errand, so I ran back upstairs and kept at it.  I was liking what I was doing!

Finally, the next day, I got all the pieces positioned and next it was just a matter of sewing it all together with the green sashing.  It went quick, since it was all easy sewing--nothing is really pieced, so everything fit together great.  The sashing strips were cut 1.5."  Once all the row elements were together, I joined the rows with more sashing in between and surrounded the finished piece with 2.5" strips.  The two yards of sashing fabric was enough, with just a little left over.

Here is the finished top.  I have the backing and batting ready.  I just need to layer them and I can machine quilt it.

This quilt was lots of fun to make and I'm really glad that it will be finished.  As I mentioned in my last post, these sort of projects are fun for me when I have a plan and get excited.  If I'm stumped and not in the mood, they seem more tedious.

Have a great day!
JoAnne