Squirrelly

What happens when you should be quilting the last two recently finished WIPs and an Anita Grossman Solomon book shows up in the mail? Why of course you pull out an old FQ bundle, add in some coordinating blenders, and piece up 48 Old Italian Blocks.

I love this block, but it always looked a bit too complicated and fiddly to make. Anita's book has a super simple method to cut the oddly shaped pieces without even measuring. I like the way she thinks: why do it the hard way?

Actually, I made 50 blocks, because I still struggle with value and contrast. These two looked great when I put the fabrics next to each other, but turned into mush in the blocks. The colors and scale of the fabrics are just too similar. With Anita's method, you get two reverse blocks from each pair of fabrics, so I ended up with double mush. Oh well. It only took a few minutes to pair up a couple with much better contrast and these will be set aside for who knows what.

And then, once you've made 48 (or 50) blocks and need to be packing for your week long trip to New York, what's a girl to do except try six different flimsy layouts then stitch them all together? I still see a few blocks that where the contrast could be better, but overall I'm happy with this. I'm thinking I might do a completely scrappy version and really, really concentrate on each block having the strong contrast that makes the "X" pattern shimmer.

The top is currently 36"x48", so it could be a wheelchair quilt as-is, or perhaps I'll add some borders to make it bigger. It felt good to do this whirlwind of sewing right before I had to leave my quilting for a week. 

Linking up with Sandra's DrEAMi party, since I dropped everything to chase this squirrel!