Granddaughter Black White & Red

 

I mentioned briefly that my darling granddaughter (DGD) wants me to make her a quilt that is black, white and red. I kinda sorta knew where I was going with it, but that idea didn't thrill me so I got out my quilt books and started browsing. The quilt above is SLICED, which I made way back in 2013, from Amy Ellis's Book, Modern Neutrals. We all know how much I love neutrals (NOT!) so naturally I did some tinkering. I liked this quilt back then and I thought it would be suitable as a Black, White and Red quilt for my DGD, so I sent her a picture. (Remember she lives on the other side of the country.)

My son said she loved the design. I had another question. More BLACK than Red or more RED than Black?

The answer was MORE BLACK! 

Well all righty then. Not quite what I was expecting from an almost ten year old girl. When I told Julie she asked, "Does she know black fades fastest of all colors?"

"No, of course not," I replied, "However, you and I both have one person in our lives for whom we would do anything. I'm her grandmother, and I'll pretty much do anything she wants."

Besides, this is the quilt that is going to hide under the blankets during the day, or at least that's the theory.

I did, however, extract some concessions from DGD. I could use black and white fabrics, which she likes, and the blacks could have bright colors on them. With those two concessions I knew I was in business.  No problem. I can do that. Now that the work on the floors is all done and I have put the house back to rights, I can get into the studio and get to work. I made a couple of test blocks and then went through the stash to make combinations I thought would work. You can see some of them above.

Of course I started working before I figured out how many of each block I needed, but I wanted to see if what I had in my head would work in real life before I got too committed. But once I had these blocks on the design wall I knew I was good to go.

I did get my notebook out and I did the math. The amounts on the page above are wrong. I need 20 Red, but only 10 of the Dark "L" blocks, and I need 30 of the blocks with the dark center and Light "L."

Here are the fabrics for those ten dark L blocks. I will be making four blocks from each combination. It's always good to have a few extra.

This is to give you an idea of where this is going.