Last/First Quilt

The official title of this quilt is "The Last Quilt of the Year" which really should be said to music, as Chris Isaac's "The Last Month of the Year" was the favorite holiday tune of the Munchkin this season, and I got it stuck in my head.... bad! But it is also the "Last/First" quilt as it was begun in the last week of 2010, but not completely completed until the first few days of 2011.

This was fabric I purchased during my "hop" in July - it was so new in the shop they had not even cut FQ's of it yet and it just fell off the shelf into my arms. It had PIGS status - still in the bag from the store - until I was moving it around the day after Christmas and realized the Happy Hour Snapshots I had just used for another quilt would work well with the flannels due to the minimal seams - and would also show off the larger scale prints of this fabric nicely.

So the day after Christmas I spent a bit of time in the afternoon doing some cutting, and that evening after the Munchkin was in bed I had 36 blocks stitched up and waiting for "math class."

See -the Munchkin had decided he wanted to play "school" during his break from school. With a new Wii to double for "gym class" and some thank you cards to work on for "writing class" - I thought that working on laying out a pattern and counting blocks would be a great lesson for "math class."

So the layout on this quilt is the Munchkin's hard work. He followed three rules:

1: follow the pattern of where the inside rectangle is in each block. We went top, left, bottom, right across each row.
2: Don't put more than one block of any fabric in each row.
3: Don't put any of the dark pink blocks in an outside edge or row so that they don't blend in to the border fabric.

I am a bit biased -but I think he did a great job!

The backing fabric was a fortunate find. I had popped in to an out-of-the-way, very small JoAnn's back in early November to "pick up some thread" for the other Snapshots quilt, and discovered that their clearance red tag fabrics were an additional 50% off that day. This store gets a lot less traffic than the other stores I shop, and their selection of clearance quilting cottons was VERY good!

I quickly filled my arms and wished I had grabbed a cart. I picked this orange vine fabric up and bought the bolt - thinking I would use it for backing fabric on another project - but the colors matched so nicely that I used it on this. The Munchkin had requested "fluffy fabric" on the front (flannel) and "smooth fabric" on the back - so that is what I did - with another layer of flannel in the middle.

The quilt still needs a good washing for a good crinkle, but it's been "field tested" by both the Munchkin and I and seems to be working just fine!

The fabric line for the flannels is "Ice Garden" by Maywood Studios. (note -this link is NOT where I purchased the fabric -but shows the entire line in one link).

So one less PIGGY in my craft room - one more quilt on the sofa - although the Munchkin wants it for his bed, too!!!

Happy New Year - Happy New Quilt!