I am about to reveal my latest quilt to you. It came together as a result of a confluence of factors.
1. I decided to try to make a mini quilt a month again this year. There is a group of us who do this, as documented by Wendy at
The Constant Quilter. I made quite a few small quilts last year as a result of this group. You are welcome to join us.
2. I looked through my library books for a pattern, and this book,
Minimal Quiltmaking by Gwen Marston, looked like it would give me a quick and easy quilt that I could finish by the end of the month.
3. I decided I am going to track my fabric purchases this year. Not to limit myself, but to be more aware. Of course, I had to buy fabric at the end of the year sale from Bluprint that I did not have to track. There were a lot of fabrics that were $2.70 - $3.30 a yard, so I could afford to splurge. A smart person would have bought bigger yardage for borders and backings, but with so many pretty fabrics, I wanted one of each. They individually wrap each piece. I just bought for the stash and not for a particular project, so I just got whatever I liked. I normally buy tone on tone type of fabrics, but I bought some large designs. They are less practical, but prettier. I was itching to use that rose print on the left and was initially thinking of using it as a center fabric of an Amish-type diamond quilt.
4. Kim has a wonderful blog called
Sarah Lizzies where she shows gorgeous photos of flowers and quilts. She said there is no such thing as too busy. Since I was still under the influence of her blog, I decided to combine my fabric purchases into one quilt. I've done this before with
Simply Squares and was really happy with the end result. If you think my quilt is too busy, go spend some time on her blog until you fall under the influence too. Remember who sent you, and please come back to visit me if you can pry yourself away from her spell.
I have been trying to make a minimalist quilt for a long time, and consider myself graduated from that school after making the Blue Shirts quilt. There is some sort of technicality about actually finishing the quilt, so I haven't received the diploma yet, but whatever. I decided to go to the other extreme and make a maximalist quilt.
5. Of course I chose the least minimal quilt so I could show a large number of fabrics. The quilt pattern is a large one, so I did some math to cut the pattern to a quarter of the size of the original. If you want to teach some kids some fractions, this is a great pattern to use, since pretty much all of the shapes wound up with a denominator of 8. Not the easy ones like 2/8 or 4/8, but the more persnickety 3/8 and 5/8 and 7/8. Lucky for me, the Project Quilting Challenge is
Notably Numeric. This means that I can make the quilt I was already planning on making, but now instead of a month, I have to finish the quilt in a week.
"Sometimes a quilt gets whomped with the ugly stick, but if you learned
something THAT IS ENOUGH. Do it, get it done, and MOVE ON." Trish Franklin
Game on! I did change the pattern once I got the body sewn as I tried to find a pleasing arrangement using my fabric. I wound up using the border fabrics as frames. This involved additional use of my calculator and thinking and measuring. Too bad I am using letter instead of number fabric.
All but one of the fabric is new. That one, the framed red violet, is a scrap of fabric that is in both of my
Drunkard's Path quilts. The scrap box I am working on emptying now is an old one and had this trimming from the backing of my first Drunkard's Path quilt.
Also Linked with:
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TGIFF
Small Quilts and Doll Quilts