Nautical quilt top

Slava wanted a quilt in blue. I had ordered the cutest blue fabric from Higgs & Higgs and we choose the design from the The Cake Mix Quilt book from Fat Quarter Shop.

I started by cutting the 10 inch blocks as I did not have the recipe cards and figured I would wing it. If my blocks would be an inch smaller or larger it would not matter as they would all be the same design. In the end my half square triangles were exactly the size they had to be and my blocks were 16.5 inches as required. Once all the squares were cut, the hst sewn, assembling all blocks went pretty fast. I laid out the hst's in layers, ensuring the order was the same for all little blocks and sew 6 blocks in an afternoon. A few days later sew 6 more blocks. They were pretty big so I decide to make four blocks less and only 12 in total.

Once all 12 blocks were done the puzzling started. I had three designs and each design was in two colours, either the background was white and the sea animals were in blue, or the background was in blue and the sea animals in white. I alternated the blue and white background blocks and loved the way it was coming together.

For the sashing I deviated from the original pattern as the idea was that the half square triangles would float. If I would make the sashing in white, the quilt would be toooooo white. I used dark blue, almost the same as the blue in the blocks for the sashing and the border and loved the result.

I managed to sew all together just before I left for Ethiopia for work. Next step, buy blue fabric for the backing and binding, order the batting on-line and next month finish the quilt. Most likely he will not use the quilt this winter, unless we have a few cold nights in April.

Linking up with Patty's One Monthly Goal for February over at Elm Street Quilts. I enjoy participating and being inspired.