mint chocolate chip quilt

Frances has two good friends graduating from high school this spring, so we decided to make each of them a lap-size quilt to take away to college. I don't think either one of them knows about this blog, so I think I can get away with showing them here. (Girls, if I'm wrong and you see your quilt here first, act surprised at graduation.) This is the first one -- Frances asked Jenna for some favorite colors and chose this combination of mint green, brown, and cream -- at Baskin Robbins last night I had the mint chocolate chip inspiration.

The pattern is one I got at the Road to California quilt show earlier this spring. It's the first time I've used a published quilt pattern and I have to say that what it might have saved me in preparation time, it more than cost me in general familiarity with what I was doing. Like failing to notice until everything was cut out that I would be working with 1.5 inch strips! Hello, that's way too small. I am not patient or precise enough to work with pieces that small. That gave the quilt what I'm going to refer to from here on out as a charmingly wonky look. The pattern was designed to use a "honey bun" (I'm sorry, that's just too ridiculous to say without quotes around it) so it wouldn't scale up neatly. In the end I probably spent enough time trying to change the pattern that I would have been ahead if I'd just made it up myself anyway.

All of that having been said, I think it turned out pretty cute. Frances chose a pretty selection of fabrics and laid out the top the way she wanted. We added an extra row and column of blocks to bring the whole thing to a good lap size and included a brown border. When it came to the quilting I realized that I haven't done anything with a border since I started machine quilting. It seemed to suggest a different pattern over the border than over the blocks -- what to do? So this is what I made up. After doing this one, I think I prefer really simple quilting, at least with my present machine and skill level!

On the back I used the 4 extra blocks and 2 strips I didn't need for the blocks. They were just right to add the width I needed to make up the difference between the width of the bolt and the width of the quilt. Hey, is that why people starting piecing the backs of their quilts? I mean as long as you have to sew it together, why not stick in some of those leftovers from the top?! If anyone is out there reading this, they're probably having a big "Duh." moment.

Ok, on to the next graduation quilt -- something from a different case at Baskin-Robbins!