Dust Off a Quilt Book Blog Hop-My Day

Welcome to my day for the Dust Off a Quilt Book Blog Hop hosted by Beaquilter.  Many thanks to Bea for again hosting this event, and the sponsors she lined up for giveaways.  Be sure to head over to Beaquilter to take part in the giveaways she has going, for great patterns, batting sampler pack, and jelly roll.

I took part in this event last year and you can read about it here.  This year, I went through my old books again, and I finally chose this one.

This was a Red Wagon Book, which consisted of the designers Gerry Kimmel, Jan Patek and Linda Brannock.  I have a lot of the Red Wagon books, plus those when these designers decided to go out on their own.   I just can't get rid of them, I love them so much.

I started quilting in around 1994, and my local quilt shop had the greatest classes, monthly meetings, including a Red Wagon meeting where a local designer gave us a new block of the month and it was called the Red Wagon Club, with primitive quilts.  This was one of my Red Wagon quilts that local designer Gretchen Jennings created for us.

When this blog hop came up, I knew I wanted to use one of my Red Wagon books which have multiple projects I would like to do.

I chose the Ships Quilt, which has ships and whales, but I also love this one called Jonah and the Whale.  Jonah is lying in the whale's belly.  I have always loved the quirkiness of this one!

I have  been quilting for the past 3 years since retirement basically on my stash, though on this quilt I needed to order some wave fabric.

I started putting together my ships, and machine appliqued my whales.  

Pretty soon I had all my components done, which used templates by the way, to which I did add seam allowances.

Then I started cutting out the strips to go between the boats.  Not reading the instructions very well, which had +sa, I cut these all 1/2 inch less than they should have been.  I hadn't figured it out yet.

I started putting the sashing between the ships, and I don't know what I was thinking, but I ended up trimming the bottom of my ships off 1/2 inch.  I finally figured out what I had done when I started trying to add these strips between the rows of ships to the whale pieces and they weren't wide enough.  

I had about 1 yard of fabric left that wasn't cut, and cut the right size sashing strips, and attaching them to the whales.  Luckily I had enough!

Next I sewed the last row of whales all together, and I discovered another snafu!  They look fine here:

But then when I went to sew them to the bottom row, they are an inch+ too big.  

So I had to undo the whales and trim each block 1/4 inch, and resew them back together.

I finally was able to put it together with no more problems.   On my design floor

And attached to the bookcase.  It has been too windy here to get a picture outside. 

I still need to quilt it, but the top is finished and I love it!  I learned a lot about using old quilt books, about the importance of reading directions carefully, as the seam allowance might not have been added in. 

Be sure and visit Quilting Jeanne, link below, and Beaquilter for the giveaways.

March 5

Quilting Jeanne

Karrin’s Crazy World

Thanks so much for stopping by, and thanks again to Bea @Beaquilter for hosting this.