Love is All Around

This is one of my oldest WIPs. In late 2010, I asked my bee-mates from the Sew & Bee Happy bee to make me Circle of Geese blocks. I tucked them away until I joined the Finish Along and took stock of my WIPs and made a plan to tackle them.

When I pulled out these blocks to work on them, I realized why they'd sat. Such is the challenge with bees - the quality of the blocks you receive can definitely vary. And so these blocks proved to be quite challenging to work with. A traditional setting, even with sashing, wasn't going to work.

I thought about putting the Circle of Geese blocks at the centre of some scrappy log cabin blocks. At one point, Quilt As You Go occurred to me, and then I remembered a block that I'd pinned for my DIY sampler by toefeather, and the layout was perfect!

I did do QAYG, following Marianne's tutorials for stitch and flip strips, as well as how to join the blocks using wider joining strips. I chose a backing fabric that would blend nicely when all the pieces were put together.

The quilting is quick, simple, organic straight lines using white Aurifil 50 wt, which is a dream to stitch with. I used it all throughout this quilt's construction.

The QAYG technique definitely doesn't save time, but I must say that this is the squarest quilt I've ever made so there's that! The binding was chosen by G and deemed appropriate for the quilt's recipient: her 5-year old cousin.

The finished quilt - before washing - is 60" square. I'll likely use the QAYG technique again - it certainly makes handling the bulk of a large quilt a lot easier. I'm happy to have a Q3 FAL project done.