Shoo Fly for Abbi

Tomorrow will be my granddaughter's 12th birthday.  She assumes and has been telling all her friends that her Grandma is making her a quilt.  Of course she is correct!  She won't receive her quilt for a couple of weeks because I plan to hand deliver it when I make a trip to Tennessee towards the end of the month. There were so many birthdays within a few weeks of each other, I had to decide on another quick and easy design.

I chose to make the Shoo-Fly using the Disappearing Pinwheel by Jenny Doan of Missouri Star Quilt Company.  She provides an excellent FREE video tutorial, just click on the link below to see it for yourself:

I followed her instructions to make the Shoo-Fly blocks, but I didn't follow her entire directions when it came to finishing the quilt top.  I didn't add all the smaller pinwheel blocks around the edge of the quilt as she does.  I made more blocks, 42 to be exact and sewed them together 6 across and 7 rows down.  Then I just added two borders to make it large enough to fit Abbi's queen size bed.

It was easy and fun to make the blocks.  I used a Layer Cake (pre-cut 10" squares) by Windham Fabrics called Love At First Bite.  The fabric line has adorable cupcakes, sprinkles, bakery terms, etc. on shades of pink, mint, cream, yellow and browns.  For the neutral I used a Layer Cake of Kona Snow.

My design wall as I arranged the placement of my completed blocks.....

I shopped from my "stash" for border fabrics.  A Kona solid Purple was used for the inner border and I found a piece of yardage (just enough) for the outer border called Journey's Flower Patch by Free Spirit.  It may be flowers, but if you use your imagination, can't you see cupcakes with pink icing and maybe a cherry or jelly bean on top too?  :) :)

Time to start quilting.  I used a backing fabric that is 108" wide and decided to be frugal by quilting smaller projects on the extra fabric at the same time that I worked on the quilt.  Would you believe that I actually quilted two table runners and 2 sets of place mats (a total of 8 place mats) while I quilted the quilt itself?

The quilting pantograph I chose to use is called Mod Dotz by Urban Elementz.

Quilting is finished.....

Close up.....

Close up of quilt back....hopefully you can see the quilting....it was difficult to get a good picture.

What are YOU working on?