next up on the quilting block

While the quilt bug is still fresh and i'm on a roll i decided to move right along to the next To Do project. Actually, it's an old To Do project, but i was waiting for the muse to strike. You know how Emily Post (or whoever is in charge of deciding these things) says that you have a year from the date of the wedding to give someone their gift? Well we have some friends (E & A) who got married last year. Oh, about 51 weeks ago to be exact. Right, so we have one week left to be within the realm of "polite". And I really, really like to give people something handmade for wedding gifts. In fact, i'm "owe" 4 wedding presents to good friends who've gotten hitched in the past year. I should've bought gifts, but i've committed myself to making something for each of them. So right now there are 2 quilts and 2 stained glass panels on my "open projects" file. I have plans for the others, but this one i just didn't have the creative spark until last week!

At the recent wedding in wyoming, we stayed at someone's house. The guest bed had a really gorgeous quilt on it. Using only 2 colors. In fact, it was all the same half-square triangle arranged in an interesting chevron pattern. i loved it. i wanted to copy that pattern for E & A's quilt. While i was buying the pink backing fabric for the baby quilt i found the 2 fabrics that would be perfect for them. The dark fabric is a blue-green is the teeniest random lime green dots. The light fabric is light lime green with blue and green leaves/buds on it. I really love these fabrics!

Then, i realized that making approximately 200 of the same half square triangle would be ridiculously tedious and boring. i would NEVER finish that! So i went hunting through quilting websites and my own books and found another pattern that would look great in two colors, but have enough variation to keep me interested. BUT also not so hard that its beyond my capabilities. (if its not rotary cut, i just won't do it. applique and paper piecing = yucka to me!)

Voila! Quilter's Cache calls it Friendly Hand. One of my rotary quilting books calls it Milky Way. I call it "not Gross-Country-Quilty looking". Somehow, I managed to have a whole saturday afternoon to myself last weekend and i was able to get a really good jump on the quilt top. i have no illusions that it will be finished by their first anniversary, but at least my guilt is slightly appeased now that the project is really underway.