The First of Four

I have always wanted to make a quilt for each of the four seasons.  I was just chatting with The Snail the other day and happened to mention this and she most enthusiastically replied, “that’s a great idea!” So of course that got me thinking.

I’ve been buying these vintage sheets and pillowcases lately and the colors are so springy, they were just screaming out to be made into my Spring quilt.  Originally I started buying them to make a tablecloth and napkins, and I’m glad to say that there is enough fabric here to do both.

I spent a lot of time looking at quilts online and doing some drawings in my sketchbook.  With the very pastel palette of these fabrics, I wanted a somewhat modern design to keep the whole thing from being over the top cutesy.  I always get this crazy anxiety before starting a quilt.   Will it be the right pattern?  How will it look?  Will it be easy?  Will I have enough fabric? And then there’s The Math.  My least favorite part of quilting is the figuring out how-much-of-this and how-big-do-I-cut-that.  I hate it.  I made a stacked coins quilt for some dear friends recently and I allowed myself to work more freely than I ever had before. I did a little planning, then I just got in there and started sewing.  It was so liberating and so much fun.

So this weekend, I decided to just jump in.  I certainly had no shortage of fabric to work with.  I finally decided on something similar to Alissa’s Land & Sea Quilt.  Amanda Jean posted instructions for this quilt here.  But just like Amanda Jean, I am unable to just follow directions, so I decided to use a different technique for assembling my blocks.  I like the stack-and-slice method in Karla Alexander’s book Stack a New Deck, so I’m doing that instead.

I cannot believe I got from designing to having nine blocks completed in one day.  Admittedly, I had a few hours of time to myself because it was Sunday and The Daddy Monkey took the kids out of the house so I could have a break.

Here are the sheets and pillowcases, all washed and folded.

All of the squares, cut (or torn) and ready to go.

The first set of blocks, DONE!

Today, by some strange force of nature, The Girl was napping and The Boy was listening quietly to a story in his room, so I was able to sew nearly nine more blocks.  Dare I say I can have this thing done by the Vernal Equinox?