Parade of Quilts - Stay at Home Round Robin

I don’t often follow along with quilt-alongs or blog hops. When I occasionally do, however, it’s because the theme or idea is special to me personally. That’s what struck me with the Stay At Home Round Robin (SAHRR). I don’t have what most people would consider a large fabric stash, but I have lots of scraps. And when the stash or scraps get to be “of a certain age” (more than 4-5 years old), it’s time to focus on ways to move them along into finished projects. So the unique idea of this round robin, my old Bonnie and Camille fabrics, and the “seed” block started this whole journey.

The original block, on the left (and the portion inside the skinny green border), was originally intended for a Farm Girl (Lori Holt) sampler quilt. I’d made so many fun blocks for that quilt that this one didn’t make the cut. When I selected it for the SAHRR, I changed out the middle to a dark navy, which was a color/fabric I wanted to use in other places in the quilt (and use up).   

SAHRR has been hosted by Quilting Gail. After selecting our initial blocks, there were seven rounds to add to the quilt during February and March, each called on a weekly basis by one of 7 other hostesses - each a great quilter in her own right.  The pictures above show the block with the first assigned border, piano keys.

The second round was Plus Blocks. I chose to add them only to the top and bottom edges in order to begin transitioning the quilt from a square to my preferred rectangle.

The third round was Flying Geese. I knew that with these bright, bold colors of red, green, and navy, that there would be a need for a place to rest the eye - some negative space. So I designed the flying geese with cornerstones to become the four corners. 

The next round called for checkerboards. When you’re doing a mystery quilt-along like this, it’s a bit of a dance to keep your quilt from growing too fast (or not fast enough). It’s tough to pace yourself and select the appropriate sizes of each border round when you don’t know what’s coming down the line. In this case, I kept my checkerboard small. With the intense colors of the green and navy, it was going to be a prominent round regardless of size.

I was very pleased with it at this point, and if I’d stopped here, I would’ve had a nice wall hanging of 

30.5” x 36.5”.   

Four Rounds down, three to go! Round five was wonky stars (or regular stars as an alternative). I chose Friendship Stars with corner triangles because they create a visually pleasing pattern. Unfortunately, I didn’t choose the best fabric for it. I think it looks rather “mushy” for lack of a better term. But the goal was to use up these particular fabrics, so the stars stayed.

Round Six: Log Cabins. Again, I chose to only do these on the top and bottom to finish out the transition to a rectangular quilt.

All that was left was the last round (#7), and that was announced as pinwheels. With the stars of round 5 playing such a prominent role, I decided to add a plain border and use the pinwheels as the final four cornerstones. I love pinwheels and would’ve made more if a border-full of them wouldn’t have looked so bad on paper!

So, we are all here at the SAHRR Parade to show off our finished quilts. I did specialty quilting in almost every round, but forgot to take pictures of the process. Oh well. Here is my quilt which finished at 52x67”.

I’m going to name it “Stay at Home”, which seems appropriate if not clever.

Sorry about the bright sunlight. The pictures were actually worse in the shade. These are hard colors to capture accurately; the green isn’t as yellow as these pictures make them look.

The pieced back. After this, there were only a few scrappy bits left (thank goodness) and I could finally send them to the small scrap bins!

So, the Stay at Home quilt will indeed stay at home until I find a family member in need of it.  :-)

Please join us for all the wonderful finishes at Gail’s Stay at Home RR Parade. And a big thanks to all the wonderful ladies who participated in this round robin. It was a lot of work and they did such a great job of keeping us organized, motivated and entertained. You’re all the best!!