land and sea - August quilt 1

It has been incredibly hot here this past week or so. We are outside in the early mornings but then tend to take refuge inside the rest of the day. I still try to find a few indoor things we can do outside the house though because the longer we are in our house, the bigger the mess! We made a trip over the weekend to the Science Museum (along with most of the people in the metro area). And neither of them ducked away from the photographer!

Thankfully inside our house is where my sewing machine hangs out too so I've been able to finish up one more quilt. My kids probably appreciate it too since that means I am not walking around asking them to pick up their mess for a bit! While I was working on the scrap quilt I kept finding stacks of 4.5" squares leftover from previous quilts. I used some in the scrap quilt but set aside the rest to see what I could do with them. I pulled out the brighter colors, leaving some soft greens and blues. I added darker reds and a few more fabrics that I had on the shelf, many for quite a while. These are not really colors I use much.

As I thought about what to do with them I saw this 4 Patch HST quilt on Patch the Giraffe blog (it's midway down the page). I sewed together my blocks and put them on the design wall.

It was interesting but way too much going on for me.

So I decided to add spread out the blocks a bit (these pics were taken by my phone to get a better overview and not so good!).

This was better, but still blah. I felt like I had made this quilt a hundred times. Because the blocks were offset I had two leftover, but thought I could use those on the back. I left it on the design wall and moved on, looking through magazines for ideas for another stack of fabric I had pulled off the shelf. I kept noticing quilts with the blocks on point. That was a more dynamic look, and I thought it could look even more so with the HST. As a bonus I discovered that by rearranging them on point I could use all of the blocks on the front again.

I liked it so much I finished it up (after doing a bit of research on how big to cut those setting triangles along the edges). The binding is a brown and white polka dot.

I used some more scraps for the bag, making a little triptych at the top and soft blue fabric below.

I like the chickens and sheep.

Because so much of this was a scrap quilt, made from bits and pieces of previous quilts, I plan to give this one away. It is small, a baby quilt most likely. I am just waiting for inspiration about who needs it and then it can be on it's way. Thankful to complete one more finish on my list!