Picking Up Where We Left Off

Between family visiting and getting lost in a couple of good books it's been a whole week since my last post. Sorry about that! Hope no one has been holding their breath (but I rather doubt it!).

So when my plan for Patience Corner blocks was foiled by my own mistake I had these piles of rectangles to work with.



I decided to try the obvious first.

And I actually quite liked it. Especially since I know so little about the recipient of this quilt. She's going to turn 12, she likes animals and nature and music and the color red. That's all I know besides what part of the country she lives in. So a simple quilt is probably the safest.

Of course I could only lay out half of the quilt top at a time on my design wall. And the trick was to distribute the various red prints as randomly but evenly as possible.


I pin little pieces of paper with the row number to the left-most block in each row when I'm assembling a top like this and then stick to adding new blocks to the right side until I reach the end of the row. I also like to work on at least four rows at a time so I can chain piece. In the picture above I have four rows pretty well along and had started the fifth. The "blocks" in this quilt are set 10 x 10. Since the blocks will finish at 6 x 8 inches that gives me a quilt top that measures 60 x 80 inches. At least that part worked out well!

Here you can see the music print that turned out to be sashing and a few of the red prints.


Oh, and I ran out of the original music print before I had quite enough blocks. Fortunately I had something very similar in my stash and was able to incorporate it throughout the quilt top. You may be able to find it in the picture below.

I have to say that I wasn't really thrilled with this while it was on the design wall. It did give me a chance to get to know my new sewing machine a bit but it just isn't the kind of quilt I generally like to make. Once I threw the flimsy onto a twin bed, however, I like it much better.


I'm not going to quilt it right away since it's not to be gifted until December but I can see that this will make up into a wonderfully cheerful, cozy quilt. And I'm confident the new machine will do a good job with the quilting. In the meantime, I have a journal project that is taking over the studio. I'll show you that the next time!