Assembling Quilt for Sixth Grandchild

I began this post on December 21st, before Christmas last year and had completed the block assembly by December 31, still in 2020. Progress slowed to a stall over the holidays plus I did not want to publish before the intended recipient was born. Those are my main excuses for the delay in this quilt and I am sticking to them. Irene Jane was born on January 11, 2021 at 8 lb. 11 oz. Today is her one month birthday so I will begin to release my posts on her now completed quilt. Irene has two older sisters and an older brother  – a regular party. A layer cake of Moda's fabric line Enchant seemed appropriately little-girlish both in color and in tea party theme. Plus, during a FaceTime call, I had shown it to older sisters Vivian, age 6 ½, and Lillian, age 4 ½,  and they had both approved of my fabric selection. The layer cake has eighteen 10" squares, which would make up into a 3x6 block set. Wanting something not quite so skinny and long, I added two squares of fabric from my stash to make a 4x5 block set out of twenty blocks.

For the pattern, I picked a 2010 Thimble Blossom pattern called Piece of Cake {2}. Using this pattern, I'd made a Christmas quilt that my daughter-in-law (Irene's mom)  liked. Images of that quilt can be seen in my post for 9/10/14 and my post for 9/17/14. The way the blocks seem to float free-form, rather than being lined up regiment style in rows and columns, appealed to me. The pattern had called for thirty blocks arranged as a 5x6 block set but I was cutting down the size to a 4x5 block set. 

As in the Vintage Ornaments quilt, fabrics have a directionality and I wanted all the prints to be "right side up". It was critical how I oriented each pair of 10" squares from the layer cake and determined which slices should be horizontal and which should be vertical. Here are the fabrics paired, oriented, and numbered before cutting. Top row (#1 through #5) would be the side-to-side blocks and bottom row (#6 through #10) would be the up-and-down blocks.  The stripe of #7 and both the dots and mini-numbers of #9 are fabrics I added that were not originally in the layer cake. They worked color wise and scale wise, though. 

Zooming in shows off the cuteness of those little mini-prints from the layer cake squares. Each central top band is one of the 10" squares folded in half and laid on top of its partner. I think my favorites are the tea party and the little birdies on a wire. I like the striking boldness of the dark blue in #0 mini-floral but I have my doubts if it will add pizzazz or stick out like a sore thumb. Yet to be determined ...

After having making the two slices in each pair of 10" squares, I lined them up to chain sew the two seams and press. Then I trimmed each to a square 9". I trimmed both ends since I dislike working with those pinked edges of pre-cuts. The second photo shows my leftover scraps. These were too small for even me to save.

In the pressing I noticed... uh, oh ... how had I managed to get a tan spot near the bottom of one square? I will admit, I do sneak a bit of chocolate while I am sewing but I am usually extremely careful to keep it away from the fabric. Did I drip melted chocolate out of my mouth? Gross! I realize that the baby will most likely spit up on this quilt but, even so, that would be her spit and not mine. I tried scrubbing out that dot, imagining that, perhaps, I had at least lightened it a bit and then telling myself more might come out in the wash. Odd, though. The spot was perfectly round. Then I noticed other perfectly round spots coming out of other chimneys of other houses in other blocks. Whew. I had not desecrated the quilt. Dots are design features, puffs of smoke, not flaws. The white "dots" were obvious but the tan "spots" were not so easy to dismiss.

I put the twenty partially completed blocks up on my design wall without their sashing and stood back to evaluate. No matter how I arranged them, the two blocks with the dark blue were obnoxious. I even tried the old trick of shoving less desirable blocks to the edges and that did not work. They had to go. Since they were both vertical format, I would have to remove two horizontals or make two more verticals. I would let that decision marinate while I added the sashing – a sashing whose fabric choice was in question. To coin the phrase of precision quilter/teacher Cindy Needham, this quilt top was definitely in the "puberty phase" – awkward, gawky, imbalanced  – but bound to get better. My husband pointed out to me that, in his experience, with every quilt, I go through a dissatisfied period; but I always pull out of it and he always puts up with me during it.

I tried to be judicious in my choice of that background sashing fabric, so as to complement without overwhelming the Enchant fabric line, and yet not be too blah color-wise. I had to eliminate white or any of the coral, aqua, or green background colors of the layer cake prints because they would touch. I picked a beige with pink and white dots from the same fabric line; I needed to order it from Etsy since the fabric line was several years old, from 2013. I was initially disappointed that the yardage read as too beige, but I consoled myself with the idea that I could spice it up and draw out the pink with quilting thread in a strong pink color.

I added the 2" wide dotted sashing on two sides of each block, then dutifully placed the twenty completed blocks up on my design wall once again. Forgetting that adding the sashing makes the blocks bigger, it did not register with me that a 4x5 block layout quilt would be over 60" long. Although I usually like to make grandchild quilts big enough to spread on the floor to play or do tummy time, this was way too big for a baby! Even a toddler would have trouble dragging it around. Whatever was I thinking! My blunder truly sunk in when I calculated the size backing I would need once the borders had been added.  I then realizing my overly zealous error in my "I'm-on-a-roll" block assembly-line production.

At least this size "oops" answered the blue blocks question. I would remove the two blue vertical format blocks and remove two horizontal format blocks as well. Which ones? Then I noticed something about the blue dots blocks. The dots were printed off-grain. Although I did not notice this drift initially, once I saw it I could not "un-see" it. One disadvantage of pre-cuts is that there is no extra fabric to fussy cut around these type of anomalies. At least I knew which two other blocks had to be removed. 

When life gives you lemons make lemonade. I decided to put these four blocks on the back. Doing so also meant I will have enough yardage of my backing material. No only did I shorten the quilt by 12" but I added 12" to my backing yardage. Here is the wrong side of the backing showing the four blocks inserted.

Here are four of the sixteen blocks that remain on the front of the quilt. Clearly they need some touch-up ironing to get out those wrinkles. The coral pink, lime green and soothing aqua just make me want to smile. The beige still makes me dubious but I will have faith and push onward. Next up is sandwiching and quilting.