Design Wall Monday

Jack's quilt is sewn together and I just need to find time to quilt and bind it. I am very pleased with how it turned out and think I found the perfect backing fabric. It is white with black/grey words on it that all relate to music. (Jack sings in a couple of groups, has played the guitar, and loves to play the keyboard with the grandkids.) I have not shown him that fabric because I want it to be a surprise.  :-)

I've been playing with some new ideas that use pre-cuts (fat quarters, strips, charms, etc.) and this is one on which I'm working now.

I originally made this using strips (2 1/2" x WOF). Two jelly roll strips makes two opposing blocks. Easy Peasy!  :-) I like the looks of that, and it made piecing go very quickly. (I REALLY like that!) Here is an example of opposing blocks. 

The quilt becomes very scrappy and unlike the red, white and blue quilt above, I alternated the blocks so there are no matching block seams. By doing that, it completely changes the look of the quilt. I can't find the picture of the quilt right now, but I think you get the idea. Here's a sketch of the quilt with the blocks rotated.

Saturday evening, I was gifted a big piece of neutral fabric (3+ yards of a cream-on-cream print) and I thought it would be a perfect fabric for a QOV project. I'd been playing with the math to make the above blocks using fat quarters so I decided to pull a bunch of red and blue fat quarters (and scraps) and use the new fabric too. I used the neutral in all of the blocks and just made blue and red blocks. I sketched before I sewed and I'm glad I did. I didn't love how it looked to rotate the blocks. I decided to NOT make opposing blocks and line the blocks up straight across the quilt. I think it creates a fun chain-like effect. In order to make sewing the blocks together easier, I pressed all the blue blocks to the rectangle and all the red blocks to the pieced units.  Very quick to piece, and I like the result.

I have 6 of the 10 rows I'll need to make this the size I need for a QOV, and I have plenty of fabric to do that. I'll finish piecing this later this week and it should be ready to use this for the QOV presentation I will be making on Veteran's Day at school. I think I already have enough for the presentation, but I have to double check numbers. Besides, I like to take a couple of extra quilts just in case there was a mix up in the count. I don't ever want to be short and have someone not receive a quilt! :-)

What's on your design wall today?

Check out the eye candy at

Judy L's Patchwork Times

and

Monday Making