Monday, September 25, 2017

Merrily Finish

I'm alive and well, but when I checked out the date of my last blog post I understood why so many folks sent me emails asking how I was doing!  I've been on the go but I've been doing some sewing too.  

One of my Year of Thelma goals was to travel each month of the year, which sounded great in January, and really has been fun, but it's involved a lot of planning, packing, traveling, and unpacking, over and over. 


My August destination was Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Here I am at the top of Pike's Peak.  If you've never been to Colorado Springs I recommend it, it was my first visit but I hope to make it an annual trip. 

On one of the few days that I was home I answered my phone to this, "Hello, someone gave me your name and said you made quilts.  Would you be willing to make a queen size, Christmas themed quilt with hearts for our November fundraiser?"  My first response was, "You don't sew do you?" I tired to negotiate a lap size quilt but only a queen size would do, lol.

After weighing my options I thought using the animal panels in the Merrily by Gingiber for Moda family of fabric would make a big quilt go together very quickly and make a nice looking quilt, one that would appeal to folks and raise some money.


I decided to use the Thicket pattern from my Quilters Camdy Box as inspiration for a Merrily quilt.  This is my pattern, each square is two inches finished.  

I divided the pattern into 4 quadrants, to make it more manageable. 



I put a 1 1/2" wide frame around each panel and threw them on my design wall.


Then I filled in the space with squares.  I did this 4 times.  To save even more time I used jelly rolls for those squares. 


I think I enjoyed making the trees the most, and changed them for each quadrant.  


I used the trees from the free Merrily pattern by Moda as my starting point.  (click here for free pattern)



The geese in the pattern finish at 2 1/2" x 5".



I also pieced geese that finished at  3" x 6" and 2" x 4".


This is Lifetime Quilt Number 210
I've named it Merrily
The pattern is inspired by the Thicket Quilters Candy Box pattern.
It finished at 92" x 108"
It has approximately 1,821 pieces

In the end I went with just one heart, in keeping with the theme of the charitable event, I hope one is enough. 

Even though this project was a rush job, and even though I've sworn off huge quilts, this Merrily fabric was fun to work with,  and I really enjoyed those animals visiting my sewing room for a few weeks.