Gray and Yellow Bricks

Gray and Yellow Brick Quilt

My second retirement is giving me lots more time to quilt, and I'm loving it!  This one makes two finishes within 10 days. 

The idea for this quilt was not my own but was inspired by another quilting blogger, Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation (http://myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/2014/09/loud-and-unruly.html).  Kelly made hers (shown below) with gorgeous Amy Butler prints.  She calls it "Loud and UnRuly."  I LOVE it!

Kelly wrote last week that she plans to create a pattern; I couldn't wait!

So I started plundering through my scraps and found the most wonderful prints in gray and yellow...  (My apologies; most of the scraps came from a purchase of scraps online a few years ago; I remember not from whence they came!)

So here's my unquilted top...  Aren't you proud of me???  I finally remembered to take some "in progress" photos!  I still forgot to take any of the cutting process, but I'm getting better!  I cut 4" squares, 4" by 8" rectangles and 4" by 12" rectangles.  All multiples of 4, so it should come together correctly, right????  More about this in lessons learned....

For the quilting, I decided to do concentric circles, beginning with the square with the horse...  a little above and to the right of the center of the quilt.  That's the only scrap of that fabric I had, so I fussy-cut it.  Since I love it so, I made it the focus...

Here's the finished quilt.  I'm calling mine Gray and Yellow Bricks,,,  

And a close-up...

And one with the backing and binding...

I used my walking foot to quilt this one on my domestic sewing machine.  Once I stitched the first circle around the horse, I simply used the walking foot to evenly space (sort of) each larger and larger circle.  As the circles got bigger, they went off the side of the quilt, which adds interest, I think.

The backing is a gray print from JoAnn fabrics; the binding is a tiny yellow polka dot, also from JoAnn's.  The quilt finished at 39" by 48."  That was not really planned; it's just what I had when the scraps ran out.  But it is a good size for a baby!  Serendipity at its best!

So what did I learn with this quilt???  Remember when I talked about cutting the pieces?  Well, I failed to consider seam allowances when I cut....  so I did LOTS of trimming so seams would match up...  This probably added several hours to my piecing time... and more importantly, tons of aggravation!  One of these days, I will learn to use the quilt designing software I purchased.  It would have told me exactly which measurements to use in order to achieve the results I wanted.  

Maybe next time...