Quilt for a Big Girl Bed

Not much sewing/quilting going on here lately. I've been on a little vacation to northern Michigan during "shoulder season," which I'm finding is my favorite time of year to get away, although I'm still not sure retirees actually take vacations. (Vacations from what?) But it was a time away from the sewing machine. I did take some hand quilting with me, so there was that. Quilting in the golden light on our balcony overlooking the east arm of Grand Traverse Bay in the evenings after bike riding on the beautiful trails during the day was a real treat. I was working on the quilt I showed here.

Now that I'm back, I've gotten quite a bit done this week on my latest project, a quilt for my granddaughter as she gets ready to move from her crib to a big girl bed. I'm using leftover fabric from her nursery decor and baby quilt along with some purchased white/gray fabric. The pattern is simple--charm-size squares with sashes. Because I'm using several fabrics for the sashes for a kind of scrappy look, I'm making a little more piecing work for myself by using cornerstones. I was going to use gray fabric with a white pattern for the cornerstones, but decided that it looked too dark and a little more traditional than I wanted. It took forever to lay everything out so that it looked random. There is no such thing as random, I guess, unless you dump all your fabric pieces into a paper bag and use whatever you pull out. I just can't let myself do that; I'm always fiddling with the placement. Anyway, here's what it looked like up on the design "wall":

And here's a close-up of that scrappy background:

I kept tweaking the placement after I took these. I did get a little more than half the rows pieced yesterday. The finished quilt will actually be a little bigger, but I'm waiting to add the outer rows until I know the mattress thickness, and then I'll figure out how much needs to hang over the edge. I might do something with some partial blocks. Stay tuned. And then, of course, there will be the fun of piecing a back... 

Today I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced Modern Quilts for WIP Wednesday.