Welcome Blanket Project

When I visited Claire over at knitNkwilt I learned she is using her Footsquare Freestyle blocks to make a quilt for the Welcome Blanket Project. Reading more about the Project inspired me to get out some patriotic prints and panels from back in the beginning of my quilt making career to see what I could come up with for the Project. I found a pillow panel that I fussy cut to begin a small medallion quilt. There were other images on the piece of yardage too, so I fussy cut four to use as cornerstones.

The next thing I did was to create a piano key border, semi-freestyle. I stacked several prints on top of each other and then debated whether to cut them to specific widths or even to use angled cuts. I opted for straight cuts but of random widths. Once the cuts were made I shuffled the stacks of prints, moving one or two or three, etc. strips from each stack to get a random distribution of prints.

The piano key border was trimmed to 3.5" to accommodate the corner blocks. That only added a total of six inches to the starter panel of 15," for a total of 21" square. I wanted to add dimension quickly with the next round so I chose to use a whole cloth border. I cut it to bring the quilt top up to an easier size to add to in the next round too: 28" x 28."

I'd hoped that print would be a place for the eye to rest but it looks much busier than I expected. At this point I was suffering from repeated visits to the vet clinic (Miss Luna is finally showing signs of improvement as I write this, thank goodness) so I wanted something easy to sew. Using the same prints as in the piano key border (for the most part) I made a bunch of 4" (finished) hourglass blocks/units.

Sorry this picture is so fuzzy but it's all I've got to show you that I tried out the hourglasses in their various orientations. I knew immediately that I didn't want to create the impression of a fence by laying them with their dark parts touching so I tried this out first:

Even in focus it didn't float my boat. When I turned every other one I knew I'd found the solution.

I've tweaked the placement of specific hourglasses and sewn them into border strips since this picture was taken. I think I'm going to be adding a one inch blue strip to the interior side of each hourglass border sand then a red strip on the outside edges. I'll have to fill in the resultant 6" corner squares with something... maybe Friendship stars. If I've done the math correctly this should bring the top up to 40" square. I doubt I'll stop there, even though that's all the Welcome Blanket Project is asking for. This would be appropriate for a child (a small child) but an adult wouldn't find it very useful in my opinion. Unless they just used it for decoration. We'll just have to see where the spirit takes me!