These pictures are of a project I've now been working on for almost two years, in a way. The centers of each block are the product of a year-long class I took at my local quilt shop. It was Jodi Barrows' "Square in a Square" technique and the class was taught by Peg Oppenheimer. Each month we were to complete four blocks with the options we learned that month. I never finished the last two months--Mom passed away before those last two classes and I just couldn't get my head together to complete the squares. I did keep going to class, though--although I'm still not sure I'm jazzed about the technique I did thoroughly enjoy the class and Peg's teaching. It's nice to be with the same group for a whole year, especially when several folks were from my guild. It gave me a nice chance to get to know some folks a lot better.
In any case, we were supposed to have our top pieced by our November guild meeting and Peg came so she could see everyone's results. I only had my blocks pinned to my design wall at that point--not at all even close to finished. So I brought my design wall, pins n' all, to my meeting. I'm looking forward to finally being able to bring the finished project!
I've named this quilt "Creeping Scope." This is a project that just kept growing and growing.
Then I realized that none of the blocks were the same size. So I referred to my Sharyn Craig book on "Setting Solutions" and decided to put the blocks on point and add corner triangles, then trim them down to size. Bingo. Problem solved.
Except--I pulled two different potential background fabrics out of my stash to audition them and realized that neither of them was enough for the whole quilt. OK, so I use both of them and alternate. Bingo. Problem solved.
Then I decided, OK, two background fabrics, very busy blocks, lots going on. Needs a sashing to calm it all down. Auditioned the brown--too dark. Auditioned the blue dot. Too light. Well, OK--we're going scrappy here, what if I used both colors? Brown sashing with blue stars in the corners? Bingo. Problem solved.
Now I'm mildly debating a border problem but I think I'll just end up doing the outside border as I'd originally planned, mostly so I can call it "done" and move on. Each of the above paragraphs reads as if they went a lot faster than they did. The final class was last June. So, OK--so that's not ALL I was doing that whole time--I'm also still finishing Mom's UFOs as I go. But still. I've been living with this thing on my design wall for almost a year now. It's time to let something else come out to play!
