After working practically every day between Black Friday and Christmas Day, I had a much-deserved, much-needed break between 12/25 and 1/2. I decided to start on the quilt that I had been hoping to give to my friend and co-worker for Christmas! :O It is a British-themed quilt and has fabrics featuring tea pots, crowns, the British flag, and of course, tardises. Tardii?

It took me for-EVER to figure out how I wanted to make this quilt. I knew I wanted something that would show off the bright colors and bold patterns, so I wanted something with fairly large squares. I had decided on using the Patio pattern and even bought it, but then I realized that 1) none of the sizes were what I wanted and 2) the pattern called for fat quarters and I had 1/2 and 1 yard cuts. After trying to make all the conversions, I gave up and the project was forgotten.

Later, I decided to do simple sashing around square blocks. After finding a video on YouTube that explained a simple method to do sashing, I decided to go through with it. I sketched out a rough pattern to figure how many blocks and strips I would need. My patterned blocks measured 5.5″ and my sashing measured 1.5″. I cut out my squares and then cut out as many 1.5″ x 5.5″ rectangles. I sewed one of these to the right of every square. After I had them all sewn, I laid them out to play with the layout. Once again, my husband had to help out with the layout. It took us a couple of hours to arrange them in a way that avoided having too many similar squares too close together.

Then, I sewed all of the squares together horizontally. Next, I added a long 1.5″ strip to the top of each row. My video recommended *not* doing it this way, but since my quilt is a small lap quilt I figured it would be okay. Luckily the narrow sashing strips matched up pretty well with the row of blocks! I sewed the rows together until I had 2 sections of 5 rows and 6 rows. I added sashing to the *left* of each of these sections, then sewed these last two sections together. A row of sashing along the bottom completed the quilt top!

During this mini break I also completed my shams from LABOR DAY weekend! They turned out well but I had to buy 22″ pillows since they weren’t nearly the 26″ euro sham size I had been hoping for. C’est la vie!

I briefly considered this layout for about 2 seconds…