A couple of days ago I finished a quilt! Yay, me! I started this one in June of 2009, which is a quick finish for me.
Before going to visit my folks in Pittsburgh (PA) that year, I was playing with a big block called Young Man’s Fancy (about 20″ square.) It is actually a very simple block if you break it down into its components: just 9-patches, rectangles, squares, and half-square triangles.
Unfortunately, I started out being clever and using a technique of making the 9-patches that produces two at a time (a good tutorial on this technique can be found here, but I learned it from Billie Lauder on Simply Quilts, long ago.) What I forgot is that the two resulting 9-patches are opposites: the dark fabrics are in the corners of one block and the light fabrics are in the corners of the other.
After making several, I realized that I would have to make two different kinds of Young Man’s Fancy blocks. I could use the same half-square triangles, but the bigger squares and “logs” had to be replanned. And I had completely cut up the light fabric already!
I squeaked through with just enough of the light fabric to make nine Young Man’s Fancy blocks, and set them together without sashing like one big 9 Patch.
I took the blocks to visit my parents, and the inner border was suggested by my mom (who supplied the fabric.) I had a hard time with the outer fabric because I wanted a darker brown, but the color wasn’t “in” at the time and I couldn’t find what I wanted in the store. This is why most quilters develop a stash (although, mine didn’t help me!) Eventually, I settled for this fabric.
Speaking of stash, all the other fabrics came from mine. The green and the brown squares were from a fabric line called “Java Cats” which I had bought loooong ago at the Fabric Place, before they went out of business (and then came back as the Fabric Place Basement.)
Ruey & Ed “model” That’s Cats (2009)
The other brown fabric has tiny black arched cats on it and I had used it as the backing of another quilt I called “That’s Cats.”
This quilt would not even be finished if my friends Cricket and Jeff had not gently roped me into learning the long arm. It’s my second long arm quilt and my first with a printed pantograph. (Needless to say, it does not stand up to close scrutiny of the quilt, very wobbly and not always on pattern!)
I put the last stitches in the binding while watching the Boston fireworks on TV on the 4th of July. Maybe I should have called it “May the Fourth Be With You,” but I decided to name it after the fabric line and call it Java Jive.
Quilting, Piece by Piece 