Design Floor

50% of the time, my design "wall" is the living room floor. I think the other 50% of the time I choose projects that I know will not require a full layout, since it is not often that the floor is wide open and toy free. I also cannot leave the project on the floor while I put the rows together, since 2 floors separate the design floor and the sewing room - so careful pinning and labeling of my layouts is always a must.

One of the advantages of purchasing a Wii for my family for Christmas is that the play space for the Wii is also my preferred layout space, and the Munchkin knows if he does not keep that space toy free, he can't play any of his games as there is no room to move. Bonus for quilting Mommy!!!

The Munchkin is really very good at helping me with layouts - and I have started enlisting him, even when it is a project I could probably do without laying it out. It helps him understand what I am working on, and we play with patterns and numbers and talk about shapes and grids and other things "quilting math" related.

"Bricks and Dreams" is one of those projects I probably could have done without the full layout - but it was more fun to do it with him. I cut a whole bunch of bricks from scraps and various stash selections of brown and orange, with a bit of tiger stripe thrown in for good measure, and sewed them into circles of 6 bricks each.

The Munchkin and I then opened up the circles, either by taking out a seam between two bricks, or cutting a brick in half, and laid them out to create this alternating "brick wall" pattern. He had fun constructing the wall and moving the strips around to spread out the bricks he thought should be spread out. The final layout decisions were all his.

I stitched this together using a quilt as you go method and just parallel lines with chocolate brown thread, adding a muslin flange to set off the center, and wide brown borders. The "batting" is all flannel strips left over from a baby quilt project I did about 10 years ago, and the back is an unbleached muslin.

I am donating this one to the RIT United Way Carnival fundraiser that is coming up - for one of the raffle prizes people can "bid" on. Another bonus of doing this project with the Munchkin was explaining about donations and doing things for others - and that he helped, too.