11/15/11

A Christmas gift I can show

Here's a gift I can blog about. the recipient of this one doesn't read my blog.

This is a Martha Thompson pattern called Square Dance. It's the second time I've made this pattern, but the first time was in placemat size. This time, think bigger. Much bigger. Lap size. Which means it started huge.



So, first, you piece the top. See that sharpie in the lower left? The next step is to take this plain but cute quilt top and mark all over the whole thing with that sharpie. Okay, so to do that, you have to be pretty confident that it's going to come out better in the end. I drew half the day on Sunday and then cut the other half. And, I ended up with...



This tray of 4.5 inch sqares were all cut from that quilt top with scissors. Okay, so if I do it again, I'll mark a ruler and rotary cut it very carefully. Anyway, each block has to stay in the order it came off the quilt in and when they go back together into rows,



You get these pinwheels. Of course, because there was a muddy spot, with too little contrast in my original quilt top,







I got a muddy spot in the final product. But, hopefully, there won't be too many of those. But, if you're making a quilt like this, I would caution you to be more careful than I was.




I had great plans for getting it together. I made the 6" squares into 9 patches, half with dark corners and half with light. The first time I laid them out, it was pretty perfect. But, then squares got turned as I sewed them together and I wasn't careful enough to keep them how I laid them out and I got at least this one spot where there won't be enough contrast.




But, that's not going to stop this from being a cute quilt. Remember that we took our friend LD to a quilt show a few weeks ago. I bought almost all these fabrics there. She asked me what I was going to do with them and I said I wouldn't really know until I got them home and saw what I bought. And, explained that somehow, I usually managed to buy collections of fabrics that went great together and I'd use them together to make a quilt. She called that the palette in my mind's eye. I thought how appropriate that was. The palette that was in my mind's eye on that day.




So, I got them home and sure enough, they went together great. Lots of big flowery prints, which I don't usually collect. I added the border and a couple of flowery print fat quarters that I was anxious to move out of my stash (think dark olive with cupids and flowers or and a couple of yellow flowery prints on green backgrounds that came in a bag I bought over summer.) Someone had made one of the Square Dance patterns and it is hanging in the quilt show that we went to together, so what better pattern. Quilt show->fabric->pattern->new friend->gift. It was a no brainer.




I got two rows put together this morning, but not ironed. My quilting time is curtailed in the mornings and there's rarely time at night...until I learn enough Spanish to be able to force Sydney into talking to me in spanish about quilting. (Yeah, like that's gonna happen.)






Have a great Tuesday. They've promised us rain. PROMISED. Nothing yet.




Lane


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I made a quilt similiar to that one. But I went ahead and bought the 'ruler' to make it. There was some waste, but it turned out great. After seeing yours, I think I need to make another one. Thanks for sharing.
cindy

lw said...

The idea of marking cotton fabric with a sharpie gives me the heebee jeebees. I do like the result. When I get muddy spots in a pattern, I like to call them, "subtle."

Pauline said...

I've stood on my head trying to figure out how you marked this! How about a diagram? I really like it.

Vesuviusmama said...

What a neat concept! Tme intensive, it seems, but very cool!