Someone dear to me is about to go into a care home, I was planning to send some flowers until I had a lightbulb moment, I could quickly finish a quilt for her!

You may remember back in 2020 I took part in a quilt block swop organised by Kate from Tall Tales from Chiconia called F2F (Footsquare Freestyle). The idea was that we chose a colour scheme each and then each month everyone would make three 12″ quilt blocks for someone in their chosen colours. There were ten of us taking part so we each ended up with 30 wonderful blocks from all round the world in our chosen colours. This would make a quilt 5 blocks by 6 blocks. Somehow I’ve ended up with 31 blocks so one kind quilter made me an extra one.

(Edit…I’ve just revisited the F2F website which has details of who made each block and it was me that made the extra block!!)

I’m afraid to say mine have been sitting in my quilt block folder ever since, so these are perfect for a quick quilt!

When I started to arrange my blocks three of them were a lot more purpley than the others and I just couldn’t get them to gel with the others, so I put them on one side. As it happened one other block which could have worked in the quilt, actually went perfectly with the purple ones as although it’s blue, it shares a similar background colour… it goes better than it does in the photo! I think they will make a nice table topper.

Another block was beautifully appliqued but was a fraction too big and trimming it to size would have trimmed the design too. It will look great on a tote bag or a cushion as will one more block which I needed to discard in order to have a square quilt left. It was hard choosing which blocks to leave out as I know the work that goes into them but I felt happier having a plan for these ones.

That left me with 25 blocks which makes a nice square throw size quilt. I arranged them with the darker ones round the edges and the stars in the middle, I felt it needed a border so I made a 1″ border from some dark blue batik and then some plain beige.

Today I sandwiched it with a plain light blue backing. I love seeing quilts when they’re all neatly laid out on the floor…

I’m going to quilt it with a simple 3″ cross hatch, I drew all the lines with a Frixion pen this evening which took quite a while. It may seem excessive drawing all the lines in when it’s just diagonal lines across 12″ blocks, but some blocks are based on four squares, others nine squares, I struggle to sew a straight line corner to corner on a three inch square so I’m hoping it will make it easier and neater!

With a good wind behind me I might finish it over the weekend.