Quilt Qua

 

With the theme of the block patterns for August 2007 being geese and birds, I’ve included an example of a border using a variation of Flying Geese.

This quilt is made from small batik squares that many quilt shops sell in a pack.  These were all cat squares.

 

Each kitty square is 4 inches, and I surrounded it with squares and half-square triangles forming a type of Pinwheel Block.

Then, using the colors that were in the background of the kitty squares, I made a series of half-square triangle patches.  Initially I was going to simply surround the center with the half-square triangles as one of the borders. 

 

However, I mis-calculatd how many I would need and had several extra patches.  Rather then putting them in my stash, I decided to continue to use them in the border. 

 

By placing a solid blue strip between the rows of half-square triangles, and using the same color patches on the other side of the solid blue, it created a Flying Geese affect in that border – I call it Broken Geese.

 

The cornerstones were created to fill in, since I couldn’t figure out a good way to line up the Broken Geese in the corners.  All of the elements in the quilt relate to cats (birds [the geese], mice in the very corners, fish blocks that surround the mice, and pinwheels – pure entertainment for cats).

 

Once I knew the size of the cornerstones, I needed to widen the border, hence the diamond shapes of purple.  And the outside black border was intended to frame the quilt.

 

Lessons Learned
 

 

This quilt uses all hand-dyed fabric.  As much as I love this quilt, it gets used as an example of – you need to wash out all of the dye.  Each time this quilt gets wet, more of the blue and purple bleeds into the surrounding patches and onto the backing fabric.

Planning – yes, with better planning, some of the components would have been different.  However, my lack of planning often allows me to be more creative, since I need to solve a problem.

When you lay a quilt on a bed, a cat will surely find it:

 

Happy Quilting!

Penny is the author of 9 books for beginner quilters and a self-taught quilter of more than 25 years who seeks to interest new quilters and provide them with the resources necessary to create beautiful quilts.

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©2007, Penny Halgren