Thankful in July

I'd been planning for a while to make a patchwork blanket (still not ready to get into actual quilting) gift to thank some relatives for their help with a family situation over the last year and a half.  I figured we'd see them mid July, which gave me plenty of time to work on the gift, after taking some time to make a stack of doll clothes for gifts and trades.  Then I discovered we'd be seeing these relatives right after Independence Day.

Well.



The general idea from the start had been a Red, White & Blue, generally patriotic theme, mostly  because these relatives are, and also because one of the grab bags of thrifted cloth I'd picked up in the last few years had a bit of a very patriotic print that...well, that I probably wasn't going to use any other way...

I've been looking more and more at traditional patchwork blocks and thought maybe I'd do something super samplery, or maybe a medallion quilt with a really elaborate patch in the center, but I eventually ended up with the idea of a vaguely-flaggy design, with pale stars on blue in one corner and red and pale--I hesitate to say "white" because I'm not sure if I own any white cloth...did I need to mention this project was also intended as a stashbuster, nothing new purchased? (Well, nothing new for the patchwork side, I did thrift a dark blue flannel flat sheet to use for the back, even though I know plain backs are really unfashionable in the world of quilts these days...but, this isn't a quilt, so, hey.)  ...wait, where was I...oh, yeah: red and whitish stripes on the other roughly 3/4 of the top.  Since red, white, and blue are not colors I generally intentionally buy, almost all of this cloth ended up coming from thrifted sources, and mostly the previously-mentioned thrifted grab bags.  The red bandana prints were bought as yardage back when Walmart still had good weird cheap mill end cloth ("good" being relative, of course.)

I started cutting the pieces for the star blocks on Thursday afternoon and finished Saturday around 1pm.  Taadaa

As should not be surprising for me, the sketched dimensions I started with ended up being completely unrelated to the thing I ended up making, because I'd forgotten that my template pieces were meant to make 12" finished squares, not the 9" squares I planned for.  I remembered after I started making the star patches, though, so was able to recalculate early, and intentionally left the idea of 'length' open-ended, because I really didn't know how much red and white(ish) cloth I had.  Turned out there was more than enough red, but only because I had a few yards of the bandana print, which I waited to cut as needed after exhausting the rest of the red prints.  The white(ish)  was a bit more of a challenge, but I eked it out without having to use more of the charcoal-on-ecru tropical print.

It ended up being *measures* 55" x 68", so a decent lap quilt/grandchild-size blanket, or something to fold and drape casually over a seldom-used piece of furniture.  (And it won't take up much space in the linen closet if all they do is store it.)

The top is quilted to the back  with solid lines of machine stitch-in-the-ditch-ing, along the edges of the blue star area and along the seams two blocks in from the edges/away from the blue, making two big baclwards L shapes of stitching on the back.

 

As you can see, not a lot of this cloth is what would be considered proper quilting print cotton, but, as I said, I was working with what I had.  And those really pale bits (there is a bit of a print on 'em) were used only to keep from being absolutely mired in the gray "fifth generation photocopy"-look tropical print, although I do like the effect of the contrast and would gladly have used more if I'd had more to use.

So, it's kind of a modern quilt patchwork design, kind of not, which is just about right.