Monday, December 31, 2012

Arkansas Crossroads - My First Modern Quilt

Finished quilt with borders will measure 60" by 80"
The inspiration for this quilt came from the December challenge by the Desi Quilters group:
1.Make any quilted item of any size
2.Use ONLY Black, White and ONE other colour. Fabric may be solid or prints.
The Arkansas Crossroads pattern first caught my attention on the Craftsy website (the block design seemed really simple) and I promised myself to make it one day. Well, here comes that day and I've decided to make a lap-sized quilt for my son, Siddhartha. I ordered a black & white charm pack from Keepsake Quilting which didn't arrive until last week which means I won't get the quilt done in time for the challenge deadline on December 31st, but I know Siddhartha will appreciate his quilt.
I picked out the white and gold fabrics and set to work.
Initially, the idea was to cut each 5" charm into four 2-1/2" squares to create the 16-patch square, but I quickly came to my senses and decided to use them as is and create 4-patch squares instead.
5" strips were cut from the white fabric and each strip was cut into 5" squares. And then another brainwave hit me. The alternate block in this pattern requires four white squares with half square triangles to be sewn to two opposite corners of each of the four squares. Instead, I decided to sandwich a 4-1/2" x 2-1/2" rectangle folded in half to create one-seam flying geese unit in each of the four seams on the block. So much less cutting and sewing!
All I had to do was to cut 4-1/2" strips from the gold fabric and cut again into 4-1/2" by 2-1/2" rectangles.
Each rectangle was folded in half and sandwiched between 2 white squares and pressed open to create a flying geese unit at the base. The seam on the back was pressed open. 







To create the 4 patch, a gold rectangle was folded in half, pinned between the top and bottom seams and sewn. The last seam on the 4-patch block was then pressed open.
The charm pack came with 50 black and white squares so I used all 50 squares + 2 black squares to make 13 black and white 4-patch units
and 12 white and gold crossroads units.
Since I've missed the deadline for the DQ December challenge anyway, I've ordered another package of black and white charms and plan to add two more rows to the length of the quilt.
Once the borders are attached, the finished quilt should measure approximately 60" x 80". I will present the finished quilt in a future blog.

Progress update.

Until then,
Cheers, everyone, and have a very happy New Year!







No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by. I love to hear from all of you, so please feel free to leave a comment.

If you have a question I'll reply to your comment. If you prefer an email response, please mention that and make sure your blogger profile is linked to your e-mail, otherwise I won't be able to e-mail you back.

Please note that any and all comments posted by 'Anonymous' persons are deleted without exception as a means of nuisance abatement.

Thanks so much for reading and commenting on this post.

Chumkie.