Around the Neighborhood Quilt

We’ve all done it. We’ve walked into a quilt shop in search of one piece to finish your current project, and something catches our eye. Could be the latest bundle of fabrics that just arrived, or a collection of fat quarters that you’ve had your eye on. In my case, it’s always the sale corner. I CAN NOT resist the sale corner. Beautiful quilting fabrics for $6/yard? Yes please!!

I found this cute set of fabrics calling to me in the sale room. There was a blue print with little houses, kites, hopscotch, and pathways along with a green print with pets doing all sorts of cute things around picket fences. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I was confident this fabric needed to be in a quilt.

 

Even though there were only two prints, they were busy and had lots of things going on. I decided to fussy cut the blue fabric so that each snowball block had something different going on. Then, I decided to use the green print as the “pathways” through the neighborhood. I framed the snowballs with white to add some contrast.

 

Once it was pieced together, I decided to use a bold red for the backing and the binding as a strong contrast color. For the quilting, I wanted to practice my elongated meander in a circular pattern. I wanted to keep going with the “path” idea, and thought it looked a lot like a maze in the hedges.

 

Finally, I attached one of my tags to it and finished the binding with a hand stitch. I was ready to declare this project done. But, alas, I had scraps, including a bunch of small half-triangle squares. They needed completion too.  

 

I sewed them together as a center of a small wall hanging, but it was a little too small. I added the last of the green print and blue print as an oversized border that is framed with thin strips of white.

 

I used the same red on the backing and the binding as I did on the bigger quilt, and hand stitched the binding. It pulled a bit when I was quilting (a risk of working with that many small half-triangle squares). It gave the quilt a slightly rolled look. That’s a bummer but I love how it turned out. This is a nursery set with the larger quilt measuring 45 x 65 and the smaller one measuring 25 x 35.

Hopefully someday someone will get to enjoy it. Until then, I continue working on new projects, and continue to be tempted by fabrics in the sale corner.