Brandon has been asking me to make him another quilt for well over a year. I found lots of different quilt ideas and asked Brandon to pick one. He loved this one. I LOVE the colors, but I still don't understand the whole puff quilt thing. He wanted it very similar and loved the fabric colors, so I then started hunting for fabric in June. Yes, I have been working on this for over 6 months. The color fabric is all from Riley Blake Designs collection. I drove to MANY quilt shops before finding some of the fabric in Pella, IA . Although to be honest, I mostly went for the bakery and didn't actual think I'd find my fabric! The white fabric I used on the front is from JoAnn's and it is white with white circles on it. The back of the quilt is plain Kona white fabric.
So, here's what I did. The color squares were cut at 4.5 inches and the white strips are 1.5 inches wide. I sewed the white onto the top and bottom of each color square and then came back and sewed 1.5 strips on to each side. Using a quarter inch seem, the finished size of each block ended up being 6 inches (the color is 4 inches, and the white is an inch all the way around).
After laying them out and deciding on my pattern, I sewed them together from top to bottom (which is actually left to right in this picture). Once I had all 11 columns done, I sewed them together making sure to like up seems as best I am able. To sandwich it together, I used plain cotton batting.
I completely put this quilt together with my plain old sewing machine. I machine quilted a line straight across touching a colored square, once where the two white strips lined up, and once again on the top of the next colored square, so between each colored square there are 3 lines straight across (and up and down) on the quilt. I used a 3 inch double binding and sewed it first to the back of the quilt and then used a zig-zag stitch to bind it on the front. I ended up having the kiddos write their names on a colored block and I hand stitched them into the quilt. It isn't the most readable, but it added a nice personal touch. The quilt is roughly 66 by 84 inches. I love this quilt so much that I wish I would have made it king size for our bed, but Brandon is very thankful that this blanket is just for him.
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