Quilts beget quilts

By May I will have a sewing room. This means Ned will have his stuff all moved out of there, but I choose to focus on the positive outcome. Yes, a sewing room. I currently sew at the dining room table; or, to put it more accurately, we dine at my sewing table. It is kind of nice to be close to the kitchen where I can keep on eye on something cooking while sneaking in a few minutes at the machine, but it's not so nice to have a constant sewing space (mess) in the living/dining room and is sometimes disruptive to either my sewing life or family life. A sewing room will be a most welcome development in our home. It will, of course, have to serve double duty as a "guest" room when kids come home, but a futon will easily smooth that little bump in the road. And, the futon becomes a queen-sized bed which needs a queen-sized quilt. Hmm... a dilemma right up my alley ...

While paging through the most recent Country Curtains catalog, I spotted a very simple large block quilt that called out to me "You can make this!" And, so I did. Well, kind of. The quilt in the catalog is primarily reds, which I set out to do -- without investing in any new fabric. First -- and wisely, for a change -- I checked my inventory for appropriate window treatment fabric. I have a nice blue ticking stripe that will work well. So, I'll make the same quilt as in the catalog, but change the primary color scheme to blue.

Out comes my blue fabrics box. Lo, and behold, there are two sets of charm squares. These are pre-cut 5" squares - one of each fabric in a design line, which is usually around 40 prints. At $5 - $8 a set, these are a great little way to buy lots of fabrics for minimal cost. (I know I bought them for my mother thinking that even if she doesn't actually make anything with them, she'll have fun playing with them. Too late. She's not getting these.) It didn't take long to sew the 5" squares together into to 4-Patch squares, which will finish to 9" squares. Even though each set was from a different fabric line, they were both predominately red, white or blue, so blend together well enough. Now, I'll have a blue striped window treatment with a red, white and blue quilt. I still want it primarily blue, however, since I seem to have more blues to work with. It didn't take long to cut enough blue and red 9" squares to piece together with the 4-Patch squares to make a queen sized quilt.

One of the blues was first used as background for a quilt I made for Mother's 80th birthday. That fabric was actually a print I had purchased to make a blouse for myself, but after searching in vain for the perfect background print for her quilt, I dyed the white and blue print with Rit tan dye to make it the exact off-white background I needed. Now the left overs are going into a quilt that is being made with little charm squares I had originally intended as another gift.

Changing my mind on gifts - or quilts - is nothing new. That 80th birthday quilt started out completely different than it ended up. I had tons of blue and white triangles cut that I never used. A year or two after that birthday quilt, I put those together into a quilt for myself. It is not bed-sized, but it is what I call a nap quilt -- the perfect size to have handy to pull on while reading or snoozing or just watching TV (another term for snoozing). That blue and white quilt usually finds itself on the back of a chair in the living room. Now, it will have a cousin in the sewing room.

This new quilt top went together very quickly. 9" squares make short work of a quilt. I started cutting last weekend and finished piecing it together during the week. It doesn't look anything like the red quilt in Country Curtains. The random placement of the 4-patch blocks along with the treasures from my stash make it a much patchier patchwork piece. It does use up lots of odds and ends and after it's quilted will be the perfect size to warm whoever sleeps on the futon in my sewing room. Of course, I now have smaller left overs of the reds and blues that will end up back in their respective boxes to wait for a new idea to be born. Pillowcase trim? Maybe.