Hey y'all!!

Today, I'm going to share with you the story of my Lenten sewing project: a scrappy quilt!

So this project started out as one of those "experiments" that I'm famous for. What I'll do is I'll find out some craft and then attempt to create it. Usually I won't get much further than the first steps.

This particular quilt got it's start a couple of years ago, when I found a book that taught quilting in our craft stash. I decided to raid my mom's scrap bin for some suitable calicos. I simply just grabbed, big ones and little ones. Yellows, reds, purples, blues, greens, and pinks, mostly. I did stick mostly with flowers, but there was one stripey print in there.

I cut out several nine-patch blocks, and even put a couple together. I had a design, made up mostly of nine-patch blocks broken up by triangles. But then I, mysteriously, stopped working on it.

Fast forward to late 2019, when I found the bag of scraps once more when renovating my room. Rather than hiding it again, it got put in a rather prominent place, where I could remember to pick it up again - in my big sewing cabinet.

And it worked, because then I decided to pick it up as a Lenten project this year!

The first was the re-design process. I found a piece of fabric among my own stash, a purple fleece that had a strange texture to it. It was the perfect size for a throw, and I'm sure that it was cut to that purpose (though not by me).

In the blocks that I had assembled earlier, I had a favorite combination - an apple pattern paired with a blue and white flower calico. And so, I decided to feature these. Research into quilt patterns soon brought forth a favorite - the Ohio Star.

With those in mind, I took some measurements and re-created my PatternJam account (which is a quilt design website) to create this design:

Initial Design - with all the horrid colors - Feb 2020

Progress - Feb 29, 2020

Now, take a look at how close those bottom those two nine-patches for the Ohio Stars are. I should have taken better note of that.

Anyway, it remained like this for well over two weeks. At that point, I went on vacation and came back to quarantine, so I had a few things to settle before I picked it up again.

By that point, I was starting to realize my mistake in going ahead with the nine patches. It was then also that I started looking hard on design, as I was prepping to make the "Hourglass" blocks that would make up the Ohio Star design.

I took as inspiration the colors of the apple print and make plans for the Hourglasses to be made up of red and yellow fabric. Alas, I was short on the red and so only had enough to make three sets of red and yellow. I had to find another combination and fast.

I decided to go with green as one of the colors, since there was a nice mint green in the original print but what to match it with? Blue didn't seem to be a good option, and to be frank, there wasn't that much blue to offer.

So I decided to go with purple. From here on out, a lot of decisions had to be made on what kind of fabric I had available to me. It turned out, like in the red, that I was short on purple too - more so, actually. And so after much mental agonizing, I had to piece-meal some triangles together to scrape enough out to make the Hourglasses.

March 27

After the Hourglasses were made and set out, I realized with horror that I had miscalculated the number of rows that I would have needed. All of a sudden, about a dozen of those nine-patches became unnecessary. More on that later.

The last thing then that had to be figured out was what to put in the corners of the Ohio Star. I knew that I didn't have enough fabric to have solid blocks like in the original design. And so, it was back to the drawing board.

I found a "crossing" pattern paired with Ohio Stars that I found that I liked, and it would be simple enough to make a nine-patch design of that.

Taking inspiration from the original blocks again, I decided to go with opposite colors to bring out the hidden colors better. For example, on the Stars with the green and purple Hourglasses, I created red and yellow Crossing blocks. Which, ironically, was the other set of blocks that needed a piecemeal occasionally.

The trickier turned out to be the ones for the red and yellow Ohio Stars. Ideally, I would have had blue or purple for all three, but supplies ran short. I tried looking for more scraps but was rather unsuccessful (except in finding more yellow....). 

So I went then with a blue for one, a pink and blue for another, and to really mix things up, a green and purple one for the third.

It was at this time too that I finalized the middle stripe. This had caused me a lot of anxiety as I original had an X0X0X0X0X pattern going, and the colors were not blending well. I spent a couple of hours one night just playing with designs.

Finally, on the morning of the 29th, I made my final decision. A couple of the discarded blocks were taken apart, and their pieces used for the "Crossing" blocks - which is why I wanted the design to be finished anyway. Three of the discarded blocks were saved with some of the pieces that I didn't use and will be used for another quilt....eventually.

March 30

I decided then that I would update my design on my Pattern Jam to reflect the changes that had taken place. I must say, even with the rather unorthodox colorations, it doesn't look half bad....