Foothills Quilt Flimsy DONE!

I have been working on this quilt for several months now as part of a quilt-along with Mary Elizabeth Kinch. The block pattern came from an antique quilt that she showed on her blog last December and so many people liked it, Mary Elizabeth decided to offer a quilt-along so others could make the quilt. I started making blocks back in February and gradually, the design wall filled up with 25 blocks.  The original quilt had 5 rows of 5 blocks which resulted in a square quilt.  At the last minute, I decided to make my blocks into a single bed sized quilt with a 4 X 6 layout and a piano key border.

It was not quite big enough for a single bed without the extra borders.   The fabrics for this quilt all came from shirts that my husband was not going to wear anymore after he lost some weight (on purpose).  The sashing is navy blue, although it is hard to tell in the picture above.

I made hourglass blocks for the corners.  Believe it or not, I still have two bins full of shirt fabric.  I have cut out the backs of several shirts to piece the back of the quilt.

I added a final 2.5" navy border this afternoon and my husband held up the quilt for the first picture in this post when he got home from work. His arms were not quite long enough to hold it from corner to corner. I'm very happy to have this flimsy done!  This is the first bed sized quilt I have made in a few years and it will look great in our guest room.  I'm aiming to have it quilted, bound and on the bed by Christmas.

Making Parts

I have been heavily into parts production for my Foothills quilt-along blocks.  The original antique quilt has 25 blocks but I am not sure if I will just make that many or if I will try to make this quilt big enough for a bed. I have lots of shirts so there is no shortage of fabric!

I made a dozen hourglass units for the block centres.  Each unit is unique--I don't want any matched pairs.

I have 15 sets of 4 HST's done (not including the set in the completed sample block.  I'm aiming for contrast in each HST, not necessarily a dark and a light.   The dark rectangles on the left are for the centre bars between the HST's in the blocks.  Some of them will be dark and some will be medium.

Here is a picture of everything on the design wall.

I will be doing some more cutting next for parts for my blocks. I will assemble blocks when I have almost all of the parts made.

I checked with Mary Elizabeth Kinch about showing a picture of the quilt on my blog.  With her permission, here it is:

Chain and Bar Quilt, Maker Unknown, Alberta, c. dates not specified, cotton, 185.5 cm x 179 cm, from the collection of University of Alberta Museums.

 Isn't it wonderful?  The woman who made this quilt used every last scrap of some of those fabrics and then had so make a few substitutions in some of the blocks. It would be fun to examine this one in person, up close and personal.

Christmas Ornaments

Over the past few months, I have been making one block every two weeks for Lorna's Holly Jolly Christmas quilt-along.  Christine came over on Thursday night to sew.  I worked on my Christmas Ornaments block.

I was happy to be able to include the Santa fabric on one of the ornaments.  I used that fabric for the mitten block too.  This block looked easy at first glance but it involved quite a bit of ripping and resewing...  It took me all evening to get it right!

Here are all of my blocks so far.  I am thinking of changing the colour of the partridge in the partridge in a pear tree block...I don't like the brown. I think my partridge might be blue instead.

There are only three blocks left!  I have an idea for an extra block so I will have 16 instead of 15 blocks.  I will be making a square quilt...