One More Christmas Quilt

It seems all I need to do is post about not having any moisture for it to totally contradict what I had just said and rain.  I don't know how much we got - it's not much - but it did rain here last night (maybe 1/2"? LOL).  It rained enough that Taegan was having a panic attach.  (no lightening - just a light rain - silly dog) He knows that thunder and lightening come with the rain so he has gotten "smart" and starts panicing early when it starts to sprinkle so I will be there when it really hits.  Once I get him calm he goes right to sleep, thank goodness.  I started this posting last night, but I had to jump in here and add this bit since mother nature was nice enough to contradict me.

One of my Facebook friends had posted this quilt to her Pinterest.  I really liked it and thought I might make one.  So, I looked up the original owner of the pinning and she had a tutorial on her blog.  Her name is Janice and her blog is Better Off Thread.   She calls this a Scrappy Lone Star.  There are several things I love about this quilt. 

1.  It's green.
2.  It is original.  It's not your typical lone star quilt.  It is only a portion of the lone star.
3.  The modern take on it.  I like that the fabrics are modern and there is no control to where the fabrics are placed.  I almost signed up to make a lone star quilt with a famous quilt teacher, but the directions for gathering the fabric just bored me to death!!  It was a gradiated quilt and she wanted you to pull/purchase fabrics that were only one tint/shade away from each other to create this lone star.  BORING!!  I told a friend that just the directions bothered me and after she took the class, she told me that the class would have driven me nuts.  It was a total control freak kind of class.  I can't handle that.  People that have to control every little thing (especially in someone else's quilts) really bother me.  So, I thought this would be fun since you don't have to control the fabric.
4.  last but not least, after looking at the tutorial, it looked simple to make.  Something I could whip up in one night if I wanted. 

So, I get into my studio and I decide I am going to make it with scraps left over from a previous Christmas quilt.  I have recently moved those scraps a couple of times and I needed to do something with them.  I originally made this quilt to be cut into a tree skirt.  However, I let my mother and sister talk me into just keeping it for a quilt.  I still don't have a tree skirt for that tree.  These fabrics were purchased at Hobby Lobby several, several years ago so I only have what is left over, which isn't much,

 but I thought I could make it work.  I cut my 2 1/2" strips from the 12" blocks and other scraps I have and sewed them together.  Even though I loved the scrappiness of the original block, I decided to go more traditonal with my layout of fabrics.  (Don't ask - I know that isn't one of the things I originally liked about this quilt, but I don't have 9 different fabrics and I only have one strip of a couple of fabrics plus I don't want to wait to pull some more fabric to go with it all) I sew it all together and add a little purple zing - one of the fabrics has some purple in it, but it's not really noticable until I added the zing. Then, the perfect fabric was laying in the pile next to me, a cream with green dots.  I debated about how that would look all cut up like I was going to have to do to make it work.  I even slept on it and tried to find some other fabrics, but my heart was now set on this polka dot fabric.  I took a chance, cut only two squares and sewed them in.  LOOKS GREAT!!!  I don't mind the wonkiness of the dots.  I even like it better.  I finished up the other half, put it together, added some corner pieces and this is what I have:

I really like this.  However, it's only about 17 inches wide and 34 inches long. The one thing I don't like about the original quilt that I didn't realize until I made up my quilt - it's only about 33 inches square. I didn't read that when I was looking through the tutorial. Anyway, on with the blog.  I think I will add about 20 or 24 inches of the green polka dot to the right side and then piece together some of the leftover fabrics to see what else I can do.  I would like this to be at least 50 inches square at the least.  50 X 70 would be better.  So, it's a work in progress right now and what I should be working on instead of blogging about it.  Just wanted to share what I am working on.  I also pieced together a pillow, but that is for another blog.  Since I haven't been sewing a lot lately I've got to spread them out a bit.