It's been a wonderful last few days of quilting, bonding and more quilting with my daughter R! We met up in Red Deer last Friday and went fabric shopping together at Fabricland there. The snow started blowing and the weather turned ugly so we decided we should leave and drive the 75 km home here before it got worse.
Once we got here, we started planning some quilt projects. First we finished up a few of R's 'UFOs' (unfinished objects). R had 2 baby quilt tops which she had previously started and I helped her 'sandwich' and pin them together. I helped R cut fabric strips to make blocks for a 3rd quilt for her friend, who was in labor at the time with her first baby. (It's was boy!) Renae machine quilted all three!
Next we decided to try a pattern called "The Modern Baby" from the McCall's Quick Quilts magazine, March 2010 edition- page 51. It features a fat quarter technique for cutting and piecing the blocks from 17 inch (43 cm) squares of fabric. It requires 12 fat quarters to make it, (not to mention the batting and back fabric.) Each block is made from 3 different fabrics. Once the 12 blocks are made, they are cut in half diagonally, then 2 different triangles are sewn together to make a unique block.
We decided that we would make the blocks somewhat smaller, though. The 17 inch square would have resulted in 14 inch blocks (35 1/2 cm) which we thought was too big for a baby quilt. So I did the math and changed the dimensions to 12 inch squares (30 cm) of fabric with 2 inch fabric strips (5 cm), instead of 2 1/2 inch / 7 cm strips. The resulting blocks were then 9 inch square ( 22.5 cm).
We each made 12 blocks with some shared fabrics and some different fabrics.
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| This is the quilt top that I made with my fat quarters |
It was fun to make the blocks, but very frustrating to try and assemble them. It was difficult to place them so that the different types of fabric were spread out through the quilt top and not touching each other. We flipped blocks around and switched the locations around many times before we were even remotely satisfied.
But after much fussing, I thought I had the perfect alignment and I labeled each block in each row with little pieces of masking tape. (1-1, 1-2, 1-3, for the first row, 2-1, 2-2-, 2-3 for the second row and so on.) The reason for that is experience! I find that once you take the blocks and start sewing them together, you inevitable forget which way is up and end up sewing them together wrong.
But nothing is foolproof and when I was done sewing the blocks in rows of 3, I realized that I had 2 blocks with the seams going the wrong way! Seam ripper time...
Then I started doubting my arrangement and switched the rows around again. It got to be frustrating so I walked away, then came back later to have another look. I realized, that it would never be perfectly symmetrical because that was not what this quilt top was intended to be, so I finally said, "to heck with it" and sewed them together.
R had the same frustration with her quilt top. She actually took two of her blocks apart and switched the triangles to create 2 different blocks.
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| R's "Modern Baby" quilt top. |
This is the end result, which I really like! I like R's selection of color choices and fabrics and I think they make a very pleasing blend. R sewed on a 2 inch white border around the outside of the blocks and mitered the corners. The back fabric will eventually be a beautiful dark purple fabric which she will flip around to use as the mock binding.
I'm sewing a similar white border on mine, but I'm not sure yet about the back.... I think a trip to the fabric store in town is in order. I'll bring along some scraps of the quilt top fabrics to see if I can find a medium shade that will go. Then I plan to make a "scrappy" binding around it, using the leftover pieces of fabric from the top.
We had a great weekend together, quilting, talking, watching movies. Thanks for the visit, Sweetie! Love you! :)
Labels: "Modern Baby" quilt pattern, mitered corners
