Have you gotten your latest issue of American Patchwork and Quilting? The cover looks like this…
It is the December 2020 issue.
We happen to have a quilt in the magazine. This one….
This quilt has such humble beginnings….
Do you remember the story?
It was nap time at childcare back in February of this year and I got to thinking about what things I have lined up that I need quilts for. I looked at the UFOs that blog reader Roxanna had sent and I pulled these half square triangles thinking that I would just count them and see what would be needed for them.
I only had about 20 minutes before the kids were waking and didn’t want to be making a mess. Making a plan with these would make perfect use of my time. I counted. Hmm. There are a lot…over 250. I started calculating how big of a quilt that would make. Then as I was looking at the blocks, I realized all the fabrics were Kaffe fabrics. Hmm. Yes, I could make this into a nice donation quilt. At first, I thought I would make a single sized quilt. I thought I would just lay out the triangles and sew them together and straight and in a row…just boring. I thought, “oh the prints will just have to shine”. Then I started playing with the blocks and laid them out like this….
Hmm. Yes. This was better. I notice that the fabrics were mostly blues, greens, and purples. I liked it.
So I laid out a few more half-square triangles….
YES…I love this!! I went with this design. I decided to make it bigger so I pulled some of the Kaffe fabric you all have been sending me.
But that would have to wait. The childcare kids were awake so it was back to work for me. I left the blocks that were sewn on the kitchen island and then over the next couple days I trimmed all the blocks.
I was able to find a matching white background fabric, pulled the Kaffe fabrics I had and I cut out 140ish more blocks over the next day at nap time.
Then I started sewing them into blocks.
I checked my stash and I had a Kaffe fabric that I think will be perfect for the border. I didn’t have a piece of matching fabric for an inner border. I ended up getting a box in the mail from a blog reader. Inside was, you guessed it, solids and two the matched really well (THANKS BETH!!!)
At the time, I thought I would use this as a donation quilt for a benefit. I went to load it on the frame…Rosie was just a pup then.
I had it this far and stopped. This was a nice quilt…maybe I should submit this to a magazine.
So I went downstairs, out to the porch, and hung the quilt. I snapped a couple of pictures, submitted it and within 15 minutes I got a reply back from American Patchwork and quilting saying, “How soon can you have the quilt here?”
Then I called Carla from Longarm Quilting Inspirations. I thought this quilt would be best with some nice detailed quilting and Carla was the girl to do it.
Here you can’t see the great work Carla did….
But happily, I took some pictures before the quilt got sent out…Check this out!! Continue reading