Catching Up on the Solstice

Kind of ironic that I am posting about the Solstice Challenge quilt on the Summer Solstice - well, a day after actually.

Way back when, I embarked on following Pat Sloan's Solstice Challenge . In my usual style of let's take this challenge up a notch, I decided to shrink the planned 12 inch blocks down to 3 inches. Sounded good in theory, didn't it?!

As it turns out, not all the blocks were 12 inches, square or lent themselves to be shrunk down that much. What's a quilter to do?

Luckily, I was several weeks (READ: months!) behind so I could look at the project as a whole, rather than on a weekly block piece by piece.

The original plan was to make 2 of each of the 25 blocks plus 6 extra for a total of 56 blocks, set 7 wide by 8 long. Since not all of the blocks could be used, it was obvious that I would need to be a little more deliberate in my planning and layout design. This is where PowerPoint came in handy.

I could move blocks around at will, plan how many of each I needed to make and get busy at the machine. Most of the blocks were either a 9 patch or 16 patch layout so they lent themselves to the shrinking part of my idea.  Except - see the four blocks in the center column? 

That a 36 patch layout.  Fractions of 5/8s & 3/8s were used it those! They were also the only blocks with a planned color scheme and the first blocks that had the light green. As it turned out, I used the green in only two other blocks. All of the other block's color schemes were random.

Yes - that bugged the crap out of me!  I would like to do a second version of this quilt using the same fabrics but with a much more planned color placement. Really like the way I graded the background fabrics in the center column so if I make another version, I would expand on that.

Here are all the blocks laid out

with the sewing together commenced on the top two rows. A little persistence & it's a top!

While it's not quilted, it was finished being pieced before the Solstice and I'm happy I was on track time-wise!

For comparison, I borrowed this picture from Pat Sloan and her completed Solstice Challenge quilt.

Stay tuned as this will be layered using the pool noodles and then machine quilted.