Oh Baby!

Because of the wildfires burning all around this region I've been monitoring the NW Clean Air web site pretty closely of late. Smoke particulates are one of the many triggers for my sensitivities and subsequent reactions. The day of my last post the particulate count for our community hovered around 35, in the 'Good' range. Since then it skyrocketed to 165, making our air quality unhealthy even for healthy people. Areas north of us were worse, venturing into the
'Hazardous' zone. Poor British Columbia has had some 600 active wildfires. I'm happy to report that the longed-for change in air flow and air quality seems to be underway. The air isn't safe for me yet but it's much cooler and more humid than it has been. Hallelujah! 

It's been too hot to have the iron on. I haven't had the clarity of mind to be able to do much anyway. There has been significant progress on one front however. One of our nieces had her first baby six months or so ago. I whipped up a receiving blanket at the time but promised a real quilt. I have a cute-cute-cute! panel print from long ago I thought would be ideal for this baby. I've had it out a few times, trying to do something with it, but nothing ever developed. I pulled it out again for this baby... and still couldn't come up with a design or a plan I was happy with. Then I remembered a fabric swap our guild did back in the day.

We were a much smaller group back then but there were enough of us for each person to be assigned (randomly, as I recall) a letter of the alphabet. The challenge was to find a print that would represent that letter visually. We cut and swapped 6" squares so everyone had a complete alphabet after the swap. I was too busy with my own children back then to do anything with the patches but I hung onto them, as you do. When the panel print wasn't working out I got out the alphabet squares. It didn't take long to realize I could put them in a Disappearing 9 Patch pattern without even having to trim them down. And I had enough of an alphabet print to be the alternate patches! 

A few of the original patches weren't safe for me to use (not 100% cotton), and there were a few others I thought I had better prints to use for that letter. I didn't think to take pictures of the nine patch blocks before I quartered them. Well, I did, but I didn't do it. I made an effort to keep directional prints all going the same way but of course failed. Fortunately it didn't matter with allover prints. 😊

I used the green juvenile print you see in the lower left corner of the block above as filler. The alphabet patches wouldn't stretch to a full square quilt on their own. At first I tried keeping all those filler patches at the beginning and the end of the alphabet but it just didn't look good. In the end I used them between blocks to allow images to read properly or when I just needed that pop of color.

The final layout.

I've sewn the quarters together, just finger-pressing those seams. When it cools down sufficiently I will give all the blocks a good press and then finish assembling the quilt top. Right now it would finish at 48" square. I'll probably add a border to bring it up to at least sixty inches in both directions. Not quite sure what that will be yet. 

Just for grins, here's the list of images for each letter:

A= alligators
B= birds
C= cat
D= dog
E= elephant
F= frogs
G= gingerbread men
H= hearts
I=ice cream
J= jack o'lanterns
K= kites
L= lizard
M= monkeys
N= notes (musical notes)
O= owls
P=pigs
Q= quilt (of course)
R= rocking horses
S= snowmen
T= trains
U= umbrellas
V= valentine
W= watermelons
X = X (I actually had an alphabet panel with a letter X in the right size!)
Y= yellow daisies
Z= zebras