Now that all 12 blocks for my first quilt are finished, I am assembling them to become a quilt top.
That is the layout I chose. It might change. The original plan was to separate all the blocks with sashing, making the quilt a bit larger and avoiding having to match all the seams and points on each square. Once I saw how the squares changed when laid next to each other, making different patterns based on the alignment of the triangles, I decided against the sashing. I like how sewing the blocks together makes squares that are on point.
The blocks alone will make a quilt that is 48" by 64". A border will distance the squares from being altered by quilting and binding. That will make the quilt a bit larger and compensate for the discarded sashing idea. At least, that is the plan for now. Assembly, adding a border, and shopping for a backing. Yay for shopping.
Last week I made my monthly trip to the big city to shop. My first stop was Hobby Lobby. (Forgive me, I work with what I now have available.) I needed interfacing and bias binding for the shirts I plan to sew. Of course, I looked at the quilting fabric and took a lot of photos.
There was this perfect combination of gold and ochre that tied in well with the scrap fabric I had planned to use for my next quilt.
Since it was quite reasonably priced, I bought 1 1/2 yards. It will be the background, or at least the light main color. The dark main color is a brown floral, a vintage fabric from Swanson's Thrift. Should I want more fabric for this quilt, I will either buy it online or return to HL next month. I saw some green almost neutral prints that were appealing.
That's green pine cones, most appropriate for my location. Here's the neutral, more ecru with a darker green floral print. That solid sage green is nice, as well as the gold floral.
While standing at the HL cutting counter, I finally found their remnant bin. It was mostly end cuts of quilting cotton. That lets you know the kind of shopper that frequents that location. It suited me and I picked out 4 cuts. Here they are with the scrap fabrics I already had.
solid brown, 28" long for $4.66, at the top;
solid tan 16" for $1.86, below the gold main color pictured earlier;
orange with white and red squiggles 22" for $2.19, at the bottom; and
black with white and blue denim colored dots 23" for $2.24, not included in this project.
It all works out to $4.38 per yard. Certainly a reasonable price for my scrap quilt project. I want to make a quilt, size doesn't matter, modeled after Bonnie Hunter's Fireweed quilt. She plans to release the pattern this month. It's an old pattern, outlined in one of her columns in Quiltmaker magazine from 2014. I'd buy the magazine, but I think the pattern might be a better deal. I assume that the pattern will have more detail about the quilt design and less extraneous magazine material. With some fierce googling, I found a photo of the Fireweed blocks. Images of the entire quilt are (link)
The Fireweed pattern is not available yet, but there are patterns for similar blocks. I found a Four X Star block on Scissor tail Quilting that is almost the same. It looked easy enough and uses just plain blocks and half square triangles. I have made both of those in my first quilt. I used the bits left from my first quilt to make a test block.
The Fireweed block adds another half square triangle in each corner. The HSTs are turned in a different direction as well, which is good. That eliminates the star pattern. There's enough stars in the first quilt. The Fireweed blocks look a little more round in the quilt. It will be an interesting pattern to try. I may have enough fabric for a 48" x 54" quilt. If I enjoy making the block, I can buy more fabric.
It's not all quilting here. There are other exciting plans and purchases coming up.
