Design Wall Monday

While I was trying to get ready for the English Paper Piecing class that I taught this morning, I decided I needed to take a break and spend time with Quinn. She's almost 3 and loves to "help" grandma, so naturally she was trying to help me get ready for my class. Notice I said she was trying to help me. :-)

Anyway, she loves to sit across from me while I'm chain piecing because she "saves" the quilt pieces from falling on the floor and getting dirty. (Now that implies that my floor is dirty, but I'm NOT admitting to that. I just play along with her.)

I was looking for something simple to piece so she could help and since I didn't have anything, I decided to use the Eleanor Burns fat eighths that I was given a while ago. I cut them in half and just strip pieced them together, thinking that Quinn would get bored before I had to decide on what I would really do with them, but of course she didn't so I decided to make them into 4-patch blocks. She still wasn't bored and wanted to help some more so I thought, "Hey, Judy had that disappearing 4-patch that she brought to the retreat, maybe I'll do that."

I wasn't sure how she made the block, so I just decided to play. I cut the 4-patch blocks in thirds vertically, rearranged them a bit and sewed them together. Here's a step by step picture of what I did.

I kind of like the looks of the finished block. It's not square because I only cut vertically, but that's one of the things I like about it. Anyway, I've used a couple of the fat eights and I think I'll make these blocks out of the rest of them and mix them us so it's scrappy. I could see this as a two fabric quilt (like the units at the bottom of the picture), but I know I'd like it better scrappy. I'd love to be able to say that I'll have the quilt top ready to sew soon, but I doubt it since I want need to work on my March UFO.

Here's something else that's up on my wall today.

This is not really a project per se. I'm working with a friend tonight to show her how to add borders to a quilt.I'm also going to show her how to layer it to get it ready to quilt. I didn't want to just use chunks of fabric so I pulled out some strips and sewed them together. This measures about 18 1/2" x 24 1/2" and I think that will make it easy and be very manageable for her. I'm hoping that she wants to dive right in, drop those feed dogs and free motion quilt this thing, but we'll see. My guess is that she'll use a walking foot and stitch in the ditch or something like that and I'm fine with that. If we have time, we'll also talk about binding. (I'm not too ambitious now am I?)

Well, that's what's on my design wall. What's on yours? Check out a bunch of other design walls by going to Judy L.'s Patchwork Times.