Ollie's Quilt

   Its been a long time since I have blogged.  School has taken over my life and honestly I haven't had too much time to write, much less craft.  Nine more weeks of school and I am hoping to have that time again. Project Quilting though is making me blog and quilt.
 

     The first project of the year is one I needed to get to anyway!  Just happens the first day of Project Quilting, My dear friend Wendy from High School delivered her first son, Oliver Benjamin Christmas!  I have been eyeing fabric for a while and had a pattern to go with it.  Well the pattern is unable to be located and I wasn't completely going with it anyway.  Yep, like most quilts, I don't fully go with the pattern and was planning to go in a different direction already.

     Since the theme of this challenge is "Hometown Proud", making a quilt for my hometown friend was just what I wanted!  I was born in San Diego, California and have lived in many places.  My current hometown though is Russellville, SC.  No real stores or even a light.  Just an awesome boat landing and post office are left.


     The fabric though matches the area.  The colors match the rural woods setting that is right on our local Lake Moultrie.  The biggest activities in the area are hunting and fishing (both things I love).  This is highlighted by the little deer prints on the tone on tone fabric. So the fabric collection just added to making it perfect for the hometown theme.  Its a Bella Collection pack from Pineapple Fabric Company.

     The block in the original pattern I was using for inspiration was the Shoofly block.  I almost changed this, but that hometown theme fell in mind again.  Being right off the lake and in a swampy area, the flies, may flies and mosquitoes are really bad. So I decided to go with the Shoo Fly block and add an extra name block!


     The blocks went together pretty quickly and I enjoyed embroidering my first ever name block!!

     I did a sashing around the blocks that matched my original theme quilt, using the precut strips and blocks in the fabric pack.  I wanted to do a multiple borders, but I just couldn't find multiple in the fabric selection I liked.  So I did only one.

     I couldn't decide how to quilt it.  As a boys quilt and the fact that I liked the basic lines of it, I did some straight line quilting.

     I did some extra lines around his name to stabilize the big blocks.

     Then I added some binding to match the center fabric and I was done!!!!

     Now to get ahead with my schoolwork so I am ready for next weeks project quilt!  Oh and photos are of the last day of our snow  In my 25 years plus in SC, I have never seen snow stay on the ground for 7 days!