Instead of a kit from Shabby Fabrics' Pieceful Patchwork Banner for March, I bought a pdf for the pattern. "I have plenty of greens," I told myself. "I can pull and use up some of my own fabrics." Well that I did, and what chaos I created in my sewing room trying to get nine different greens as called for in the pattern. Yes, I did have that many greens, but none were the correct "emerald" green illustrated in the pattern cover and associated with St. Patrick's Day. Some were too olive, and some were too yellow, and some had non-subtle prints that did not read like a solid. I did cave and pick up three fat quarters from my local quilt shop In Between Stitches to fill in my "emerald" green gap.
This is the set of colors I was trying to imitate followed by a photo of the nine greens I did decide upon. I decided added to a pure green hue, my shamrocks (colors 1 thru 5) could have a dash of yellow and be more lime and the Irish chain blocks (colors 6 thru 9) could have a dash of blue and be more teal .
I had to choose my background fabric and, although I could have chosen white, I wanted something with a bit more interest. I considered a white with tiny navy dots, an ecru subtle stripe with green eyes peeping out, or a soft ecru with subtle same-size-but-random dots. I really like the eyes fabric. I remembering buying it in Cinnamon's Quilt Shoppe in Jacksonville, FL during a Country Heritage Tour in March of 2019 as one selection in a fat quarter bundle with an alligator theme. Put in an Irish banner they would become leprechaun eyes in my imagination. I decided against them as the background because with the flipped corner triangles, the orientation would be in different directions and pretty hard to control. To be logical and make it easy on myself, I chose the subtle dots as the background. I still "eyed" those green eyes with longing though.
After sewing three four patches for each of the two shamrocks, I "rounded" each leaf with corner flip triangles of my background subtle ecru dots. A completed shamrock is the last in the following trio of photos.
I took no in-progress photos of the Irish Chain block, but here a closeup of an assembled one is shown in the second of the following pair of photos. The Irish chain block is made up of five four-patch blocks and four two-tone blocks that look like picket fence posts.
There was still some fussy cutting in this banner's future. I decided that the sashing between the blocks could still be the eyes of the leprechauns hiding amidst the shamrocks. I cut the sashing on the straight of grain or across the grain so all eyes faced the same way. I did cut all the tile-like print outer border on the straight of grain, and I centered each petal image along the border strip.
My fabric selection for the binding was a solid teal, referencing back to the solid teal of the Irish chain blocks, but I did not have enough of it. I seamed it lengthwise with the second color hidden within the binding and made it work. To make the binding 2½" wide I joined a 1¾" strip of teal with a 1¼" strip of another green. Calculation: 1¾" + 1¼" - ¼" - ¼" = 2½". In the following photo the upper image of the seamed binding is shown from the inside, before folding in half. In the middle image, the folded binding is shown from the back, which will be concealed inside the binding when attached to the quilt. In the bottom image the teal binding is shown as it will look before sewing to the quilt.
Next up is sandwiching, quilting, labeling, binding, and adding a hanging sleeve. Stay tuned for the completion blog post.
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