Throwback Thursday Quilt Edition: A Bit of Summer

Today I was going through some old photos to see what I might show for Throwback Thursday, and I came across one of a quilt lying on the grass. Since we haven't seen our grass in quite some time, I knew that was the picture I wanted to show. A bit of summer in this cold, cold winter. 

My daughter graduated from college in 2003 and moved into an apartment that was just her own, not shared with roommates. It was a tiny studio, so the cute metal daybed she bought would be quite visible to anyone visiting. It was time to make a quilt. She had seen a postage stamp quilt online that was described as "vintage" by the big retailer that was advertising it. She liked how it looked, but we both knew a store-bought quilt would be inferior to handmade. 

I printed out some graph paper and started coloring it with pencils in the soft sherbet-y shades J was imagining. Amazingly I still have those plans. This was the first one, a Trip Around the World setting. 

You can see that it is square, but we obviously wanted a rectangular quilt (says 60 by 90 on the plan). This one would have been much easier than what we settled on--just nine patches, but our final plan was this:

Still nine-patches, but with sashes to make sort of interlocking blocks of one-color nine patches. Oh yipes! I had no idea at the time how complicated that would be to sew together. You can see lots of random numbers on this plan that must have meant something to me at one time. It looks like the final measurement for the quilt was 64.5 by 94.5 inches, which means that each square was 1.5 inches. I numbered the columns and lettered the rows, so I think I must have used labeled plastic zip close bags to keep all the colors straight while I sewed. Aside from all the numbers, there's one other little mystery note near the bottom of the plan in my daughter's writing: "wacky wall walkers!" I wonder what that meant. If I remember correctly, those were cereal box toys. No idea why that's on there. Anyway, this gives you an idea of how I plan quilts. Lots of notes to organize my thinking while I'm working, but nothing much that would really help replicate this quilt in the future. Oh well. 

So, finally, here's how the quilt came out:

Doesn't it look pretty and summery on that green grass?

The background fabric (and binding) is a variety of tone-on-tone off-whites and the back is muslin. The batting is a light polyester, and the quilt is tied with perle cotton. (You can see the pattern of ties in the little diagonal marks on the plan.) And thanks to the computer print-out of graph paper, I can tell you that I started the quilt on June 29, 2003. and I'm sure it was finished by the time I went back to work in the fall. 

I'm happy to say that one marriage and two moves later, the quilt is still in use. In fact, I've slept under it at my daughter and son-in-law's house. It was a lot of work, but I still love it. 

I'm linking up today with My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday.

See you tomorrow with a finish!