A while back, I showed you a sneak peek of a quilt I was working on. Well, I both started and finished it this weekend.






(pics  are clicky as usual)
You see, each "block" in the quilt is made up of 9 smaller blocks - either five print and red blocks and 4 solid red blocks, or the reverse.  I made those two test blocks  a couple of weeks ago, liked how it was turning out, so when I went back to it, I calculated how many blocks I'd need, cut my fabric, made my small print/red blocks and solid red blocks, and discovered that I'd made the blocks too big.  Huh.  So, I made an additional two sets of nine blocks and finished the quilt.



You may recall back in the spring, I talked about this great fabric score I got - a huge zippered freezer bag full of charm squares (the real kind - samples for fabric stores ), and that I got the bag for $4.  You may also remember that it turned out there were over 400 5 1/2 x 5 1/2" squares in there!  So, yes - 400 charm squares at one cent each.  (You can't beat that with a stick!)

I used some of those squares in my small blocks which, once the red slash was included were trimmed down to a 3.5 x 3.5  inch block, nestled around by 1.5 inch strips of red.  By the way, the quilt itself was inspired by this quilt from Bumble Beans.



 I loved her quilt, and as soon as I saw it, I could immediately see how I wanted to intepret it.  She called hers "Chopsticks" due to the narrow, tiny strips she used, but in my version, the slashes of fabric were much bigger, and reminded me, somehow of railway ties.  I can't tell you how often, as I made this quilt, I found myself humming "I've been working on the railroad".  (Did I just horribly date myself?  :)  )    But anyway, in the pic above, you can see how I pieced the binding as well, using those lovely patches.

You may have guessed already that this is a baby quilt - I almost always use primary colours or black and white when making a baby quilt since I read somewhere they can only see red and white and black at first - so I called this quilt "The Littlest Hobo". 

I can imagine baby "X" with a little bag on a stick, riding the rails, this little quilt keeping him or her warm, snugged up in the box car.



Next up, another WIP, because, guess what? I joined Jacquie's Joy in The New Year challenge.  I have 8 WIPs to finish - I hope to get at least four of them done. 

See you Wednesday.  :)