Stripes!

Created for for Project Quilting 11.5 Give it Away challenge.

I was quilt retreating with friends a couple of weeks ago, and several people there were making quilts using squares of striped fabric. They were cutting them in quarters, then sewing them back together to create more interesting patterns. Seemed pretty interesting to me and I wanted to try it.

So I went looking in my fabric collection. (No, it's not a stash, it's a collection. Gudrun Erla spoke at our guild this week and she convinced me it's a collection.) Lo and behold, I had precut squares! Don't remember where they came from and they were not cut by me. Pencil lines were drawn and then cut with scissors! Definitely not me. Anyhow, they were 6 inches square.  At retreat everyone was using 10" squares, but a square is a square, so it should still work. I layered them up and cut diagonally in both directions.

I put a couple together using 4 identical pieces so it made a full matching square when finished. This is how it was explained to me. You can see they really pop in the picture below. I liked it, but it seemed like way too much work making all those stripes match up.  And, I'm not really all that good at following directions, so I shuffled the remaining pieces and put them together randomly. Way easier and more interesting!

I am going to give this quilt to the Hearts and Hands group at Lodi Valley Quilters Guild. It's the really wonderful, active charity arm of our guild and they give away lots of quilts every year. I'm sure they'll find a great place for this one.

Created by Diane Lapacek near Poynette, WI.
45" x 36"