Coming Up For Air

I've spent much of the last day and a half down in the sewing room working on a new project and it's time for a break. Yesterday I decided to make a baby quilt for one of my brother-in-law's new step grandchild, and, since there is a very good chance that we will be seeing them next weekend it had to be something that I could whip up in fairly short order. Between The Lines fit the bill.

Remember Grandma Mary's Five Patch from last fall? Well, I went back to that pile and cut 2.5" strips from many of the same fabrics, plus a few new ones - brights and florals and graphic prints that would suit a little girl - lots of yellow, pink, turquoise, green and a little blue.

You just sew the strips together, trim 2 strips of equal width from the length of the quilt, insert a double row of staggered short strips vertically and then re-attach the original strips. Easy peasy. The part that seemed to take the longest was ironing the seams; this is a project that would go very quickly with one person sewing and a second pressing the seams.

My fabrics turned out to be a variety of widths but I just started sewing and decided to do all of the trimming when everything was together, but another time I would trim them all to a similar length first. I had to undo one of the seams and shift it a little to get the most out of the fabric, which slowed things down a bit. Then, at the end I undid one of the vertical seams to cut out a bit more of from the centre panel so that the entire top would fit the width of my backing - might have been a good idea to work to that measure in the first place! More ripping and wasted time, but it's all togther now and very cute.

I've got everything layered and ready to pin and then I'll machine quilt it, but I need a break from it first. If I get this one finished by next weekend it will be one for the record books - it was such a last minute decision to make it that it won't even have had a chance to get onto my TO DO list!...M