Jana and the tumbler blocks

Whoo hoo. I've finally got my granddaughter over for a day. It's hard for a grandma to fit into the busy schedule of a teenager, but when we do get together we try to make the most of our time together. Roasted chicken sandwiches and peach tea for lunch. Her favorites. We need our energy after all.

Selfie Jana took with my camera.

  On her last visit she used the Go Baby to cut nearly 300 tumbler blocks in various shades of purple.

Lots of purple tumblers

She started her quilt and finished three rows. Each row is 18 tumblers wide.  She has decided to do all her rows before she puts them together.  That way she may choose the most pleasing layout. It might take all summer, but hey she's on vacation and I'm retired.  Oh yes, the quilt inspector approved her work.

These look good.

Not sure he appreciated the hug of thanks for his approval.

That being said the object of her recent visit was to help me cut even more tumblers. I'm making a six foot by six foot quilt for my eldest son for Christmas. He insists on keeping his house around 60 degrees in the winter and wants something with a flannel back. I decided on a winter theme, and thank goodness Jana likes to use the Go Baby. We stopped counting at 400 tumblers. That's a lot of cutting and rolling through the Go Baby cutter. I still had to cut more to finish the quilt, and am so grateful she got me off to such a strong start.

Grandma cut the squares and Jana rolled them through the GoBaby

More tumbler block

Since this is a winter theme, but not Christmas, I selected shades of blues, whites and greens, and a  brown fabric with pine cones.

10 rows of the Winter Tumbler

I ended up making 22 rows, so the quilt is a little big more than a 6 foot square. It should be plenty big enough to wrap up in on a cold winter day.

Along the way I made a few mistakes that turned into design elements I ended up repeating throughout the quilt. I tried not to repeat a fabric next to each other, but discovered early on that some blocks matched up between the rows. I actually liked the look and then repeated it throughout. I felt it provided more movement. And perhaps a little more contemporary look. The same for the darker colors, especially the blues. I tried to space them, so they provided movement through the quilt.

The first match

Added more matched blocks.

 

 

As you can tell the rows are not sewn together in the pictures above. As of today's writing I have my rows together, the sides trimmed and stitched. I had preshrunk my flannel backing. I even have my binding cut and pressed.  All that is left is to attach the leaders for the long arm machine to the backing. I don't have a quilting appointment until August. I am on the cancellation wait list, and am hopeful I will get in before my August date. I am also working on a quilt for my youngest son, also a Christmas gift. I know that is a long way off, but I have some medical treatments coming up this fall, so I'm trying to get my Christmas sewing done. If I can get them quilted and the binding sewn on by machine. I can finish off the hand sewing of the binding at my leisure. By Monday I should have three quilts waiting for space at the longarm studio. Here hoping. I will post an update when it's quilted.

Coming attractions: One pattern, two quilts. Is it horrid or fun and funky?