Three Quilts for March

 I like making quilts, and when I figured out I could make a table quilt, I decided to make one for each month of the year. (I love bowls, too, and this gives me an excuse to have a spiffy bowl for each quilt.)

March is my least favorite month of the year. It's usually grey and dull and blah and muddy. So black and white is a perfect quilt for March. This is Terrazzo, a Slashed Squares quilt. Readers ask if I really eat on the quilts. I do, but I use a placemat. You can see one at my place in the photo above. It's black and white and pink. (my pal Julie made me a set.)

I decided to show off some other quilts this month. So I changed the one that lives on the back of the couch. Julie made this one too. It's called Hidden Potential, and it's made from my dud letters. About ten years ago when I was planning a class on free pieced letters, Julie suggested I send her my duds. "Just because YOU can't use them doesn't mean they are bad," she wrote, "and your students need to know that too."

Julie sent me this quilt for my birthday a while back. I love black and white and colors. It's cold here at night in winter, so I like to have an extra quilt on the bed. I figured this one was March-ish too. What's funny, is Julie also made the quilt underneath, the one that has lived on my bed since I got it, and if that isn't a compliment, I don't know what is.

The Table Quilts & A Few Ideas

When I visited my pal Julie in 2013 I was surprised to see a quilt covering the table in her kitchen. I thought it was a good idea to protect the table and a nice way to show off a quilt. I inherited my grandmother's mahogany dining room table, and I have to keep it covered to protect the surface. A quilt would do that quite nicely.  Over the years I have made seven.

I use the rail fence quilt, Picnic Table in January.

I wanted a red and white quilt for February. This is Peppermint Swirl.

I made a black and white Slashed Squares quilt for the month of March. I call it Terrazzo.

I like using "Hidden Treasure," the quilt Julie made for me using my leftover bits for April.

The Tumblers quilt, Easter Basket, is the one I use for the month of May.

I like using the Blue Deco quilt for June, and the rest of the summer.

The Fall House Top quilt is the one I use for November and the big Thanksgiving Feast.

The Christmas Random Plank is the quilt for December.

I like having different quilts for each month, but if I do that, I am missing quilts for July, August, September and October.  So I had to think about that. Do I really want to have a quilt for each month of the year?  YES! What would I do for those? My birthday is in July, so I knew that would have to be something special.

The quilts I have tend to be seasonal colors, so according to that August should be hot colors or red orange and yellow. September is probably my favorite month of the year - the weather is perfect, and October is peak fall foliage season, so that means reds, yellows and oranges with some greens and blues. Well, ok, but August and October aren't anything alike, and I don't want them to have the same colors. Maybe August could be beach colors - sandy tans for the beach, light blues for the sky and blue greens for the ocean...

I like that idea for August, so that's a go.

When I started looking at fabric shops online the idea for July came to me like a thunderbolt.  

I like Pink, and although it isn't necessarily my favorite color, I wear a lot of it because I look good in it.

 So the quilt for July will be Pink. (Then I bought about 13 yards of 28 different pinks!)

I like the quilts to be different designs too. I want to make a scrap slab quilt for one of these, and when the Wavelength quilt showed signs of looking three-dimensional, I got out my little notebook and did this drawing. It looks like a honeycomb, and as soon as that word popped into my head I knew that would be the theme of this quilt and that it would be the quilt for October.

And for that quilt, I may very well use White on Black fabrics for the dark side triangles instead of just darker Black on Whites. I'll experiment, of course, and see. I've got plenty of time.

That leaves September, but I'm not going to worry about that at all. I only have color ideas for July and August, and that's never stopped me in the past, but I do have a very specific idea for October, so that's where I'll start.

The next quilt is: Honeycomb, in Golds, Oranges, and Yellows for October!

Terrazzo, Finished

After making a zillion flowers the other day, I was exhausted, so I spent the next day parked on the couch in front of the TV watching tennis at the US Open. I wasn't idle. I spent the whole day hand sewing the binding on the black and white Slashed Squares quilt, which I have named Terrazzo.

 Here's the front.

Here's the back.

One of my readers sent me a big box full of black and white fabric. I used them to make some half sized blocks, as well as three double sized blocks which I used on the back.

The regular blocks finish out at 14", the half size blocks finish out at 7" and the doubles finish out at 28" square.

If you make this quilt, there is one important thing to remember - make half your square in square blocks with busy insides and calm outsides, and half with calm insides and busy outsides. For a black and white quilt, that meant half my blocks were white squares surrounded by black, and half were black squares surrounded by white.

I also chose fabrics that had a variety of patterns - some were organic and some were geometric. Some were very large prints, and some were smaller scale prints. I had to be careful with the small scale prints though, because those often "read" as gray. Once concession was that some of the prints were actually black and cream. I decided the prints were so cool it was OK. We all have little rules that we follow in our heads. You have to be able to ignore that internal critic sometimes, especially if it improves the design of the quilt.

When I paired up the blocks, I also tried to pair a geometric pattern with an organic one, as well as a contrast in scale of print.

Then, when you "slash" them apart and rearrange your pieces, you get interesting blocks.  The only other rule I adhered to when I bought fabrics for this quilt was I didn't want the blocks to read as "gray" when viewed from a distance. I wanted them to be very distinctly black and white. It's a lot to juggle, and the success of the black and white version is entirely due to fabric choices and placement.

The quilt was designed to be used as a table cover, and I made it to use when a couple of the extra leaves are in place to make the table big enough for a gathering of 8 to 10.

I'm happy with the way it came out, and Larry's salt and pepper grinders look right at home!


Update: I've added a page to the blog showing all the Slashed Squares quilts I have made over the years. You can find it here.

Binding Terrazzo

I'm handsewing the binding on the black and white slashed squares quilt, Terrazzo. It's a big quilt, and I have a long way to go. It's soothing to do at the end of a busy day while watching TV.

A Bird Break

I picked up Terrazzo and Jewel Box from the longarm quilter yesterday.

You can see pictures of the whole quilt here.

 This is the fabric I will use for the binding.

This is Jewel Box, another Diamond quilt. You can also see a full shot of it here.

I picked a tomato-y red for the binding. Now I would never call a color by that kind of name. I would tell you this is a red-orange, but the clerk at QT called it tomato and I thought it was fun.

I now have four quilts that need binding. The other two are Snow Day and Easter Basket.  I made bindings for all four quilts, but I will tell you more about those tomorrow.