I Love It When a Plan Comes Together..

Hard as it is to believe, Nick will be graduating this year. 

Yes, our little guy, the baby who was born when Hilary was a senior, is a senior himself.

Quite a blow to "time needs to slow down" adage when she took his senior pictures over Thanksgiving break.

Anyway...the plan was to make a quilt for him for a graduation gift out of a collection of his t-shirts from sports and 4-H and other activities.  Angie thought that was a super idea and her only task was to collect at least 24 t-shirts for me to work with.

Thanksgiving - she was short a few but was going to check with the school for some extras and bring them when they came for Brittany's wedding the first weekend in December

Brittany's wedding weekend - no time to get to the school and she forgot the others

Answer to text sent before Christmas - she had a pile of them, ready to stuff in a bag and bring with them for the holidays

Christmas trip - she couldn't find them. There was a pile, but in the process of cleaning Nick's room for guests for the Hunt Sister Christmas, those t-shirts had disappeared and she wasn't sure where they were and she didn't want him to know why she needed them

A text after the holidays, before the Disney trip, received no response.

Plus the long arm quilter at Betty's is out of commission for a while so there is no one to do the quilting for me---AND it is getting too late to focus on this and finish it before the end of May (along with babysitting and other things that are going on).

The other day Megan and I discussed ideas for Nick's graduation gift and I was coming up dry.  I had nothing.

THEN...it hit me.  I knew what I could do.

A visit to a quilt shop, Quilting by the Beach, when we were at Myrtle Beach in September yielded a purchase of a layer cake of flannel squares.  I had found some gray checked flannel and a piece of solid gray at JoAnns after that.  Then I took the layer cake to Betty's for suggestions on what to do for a quilt.  She selected a kind of tan/goldish fabric that looked like a sponge painted wall for the backing of a simple quilt. Sewing the layer cake squares together would work for a simple warm quilt.

Just recently she offered a class on rag quilts that looked interesting.  Her finished quilt from that class gave me an idea.

I could use the layer cake for squares for a rag quilt.  There were 42 squares and I would need 63 to make one the size of Betty's.  I could supplement those 42 with squares from the solid gray and the checked piece of fabric.  The gold/tan fabric could be cut into squares for the backing pieces.  From that fabric I could cut only 60 squares so I supplemented those with pieces from the layer cake that had some gold or tan in them and decided that they would be the pieces on the four corners.  Then I added one of the solid pieces to the stack for the top pieces.  I cut the gray into enough to supplement and added in four checked pieces to complete the 63. 

The next step would be the batting.  As I searched in the bottom drawer of the dresser in the sewing room, I found several pieces of the low loft batting that I wanted to use.  As I measured and figured how many 9" squares I could cut, I think I will have enough of the scraps that I had saved to total 63.  That will be a task for tomorrow.

After the cutting, I can make the fabric sandwiches with a top square, a batting piece, and the bottom square, then criss-cross stitches.  THe next step will be the layout and sewing strips together.  

Even thought the quilt won't be as meaningful as a t-shirt quilt, it will still be something that Nick can take to college with him.  The colors are fall and winter-ish so that he can use it to keep warm while he is studying in his dorm room or in an apartment.

And even though it isn't a quilt of t-shirts, it will be a quilt made just for him by his aunt, which means a lot to me and I hope it will be as much to him.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Stay tuned...pictures and a progress report to follow.