Saturday, February 27, 2010

The Big Box Mystery Challenges continues...

It has been so much fun just cutting 2-1/2" strips and making blocks any which way! But I thought the quilt should be bigger, so I cut the all the remaining fabric into strips. Time to chain piece!
The least fussy blocks to make are the "floating square" ones, because the 9-Patches don't have any same-colored squares in them. So I had at it and made two of each color surrounding a black square, and one of black surrounding each color.
I kept the pieces close at hand and just whacked and sewed away at them ...until I was out of two colors! This is all that was left:
So I had a total of 49 blocks to play around with (actually there would have been 50, but one had some sort of glitch that caused it to disapper into the trash). I chose a 6 x 8 block setting, which accounts for that one poor orphan 9-Patch.
Up on the wall went the blocks, and I moved them around a couple times, but held firm to my commitment NOT TO FUSS!
Here they are un-sewn:
And here they are sewn together:
It's always interesting to me how different it looks when the sewing is all done. And these rows practically put themselves together.
Well, what to do now? I still had some fabric left, so I gave the quilt another round of strips & squares...sort of like a border, but what I really like is that it pulls the eye out to the edge and breaks up the block-by-block pattern. That orphan block got a new life, after being taken apart into rows!
Now this is really what's left:
I'd like to say there is enough for a plain black round, but there is not. So I'll toss those strips into the 2-1/2" box (the ones on the right are full width of fabric) for another project.
This quilt has several things I like (besides being super-easy!): it has bright colors with black, and floating effects. All I need now is a nice stripey binding...could there possible be the right piece waiting in my stash?

1 comment:

Pat said...

I like what's happening here. And with no stress. Just sewing and plopping blocks down as the spirit moves. I had to go back to your post of Wed Feb 24 to see what you started with. And in a motel room!I'll be back to see that border.
ingenb