Design Wall Monday

As promised yesterday, I'm posting about the quilt I'm making for my grandson Thane.  

While I was browsing through my myriad of quilt books and patterns, I came across this one and immediately knew it was 'the one'.  The pattern is from Nancy J. Smith's & Lynda S. Mulligan's book P.S. I Love You Two!  The pattern title is "Tiddly-Winks".  

This image is from the book.  I would have liked to have had some of that checkerboard print in my stash, but I didn't and I wasn't going out shopping, so chose what I did have, including the solid black and solid white.

Three quilt size options are given, I'm making the crib size, which will be a good size to snuggle up in on the sofa, or lay upon on the floor.

In my stash, along with the black and the white, I found an interesting black and white geometric. I also picked through my drawer of squares that I pre-cut to find the colorful circles needed.  I will machine, raw-edge applique them...the instructions only said to applique, so this method is my choice :)

I scouted around and finally found the lid of a medicine bottle that was the right size of circle I needed and drew on the back of each square before trimming them.

All trimmed, not bad.

The first block is a very basic pinwheel.   I deviated from the instructions and made my initial squares 1/8" larger, then drew a line, sewed the 1/4" on either side, then cut down the middle.  I figured with as much trouble as I've had in the past with half-square triangles cut before stitching, that I'd stitch and then cut them...so much better.

The first couple been made into blocks, and eventually trimmed to the size needed.  Not all of my stitching was precise, especially in getting those center points perfectly aligned, and I also made the 'mistake' of choosing lighter weight fabric with the white, so when I trimmed them, a few blade edges are such that they won't be perfect points, but this is a gift, hopefully to be USED and loved on and a nearly five-year old boy will not be pointing out the flaws!

I love the geometric prints 3-D effect and the Xs and windmill blades that appear.  The Xs make wonderful kisses for my grandson, and the windmills tend to repeat the block theme.  These are parts of a 9-patch block.  A two block quilt, what could be easier?

And on my design wall, the layout of the blocks.  It does look a bit plain being black and white and as a flat 2-D photo.

But adding the tiddly winks livens it up quite a bit.  The binding will be pulled from my scrap bins too, using a bunch of colors as with the Tiddly Winks in short uneven lengths so that will add a little more color too.

Now, if you're still with me after all these pictures, the reason "Tiddly Winks" struck me as the quilt to make for him is this.  When I was up north last July, my daughter, son-in-law and Thane were on vacation to visit my daughter's dad in Washington, and they took a couple days to drive over and visit me in the town where my dad lives.  As you may recall, I'd seen my daughter shortly after my mom passed when she flew to Portland to drive home with me so that I wouldn't have to do the drive alone.  Because only she had flown in, I hadn't seen the other two since Thanksgiving of 2000 just a couple months after Thane had been born.

In the ensuing years, he'd become a little boy with good manners, a vocabulary large enough to carry on real conversations, and just an absolutely delightful young lad.  One night at my dad's, we looked in the closet where I knew my mom had kept some games and there was Tiddly Winks.  So we played Tiddly Winks for quite awhile.  He picked up on how to play it quite well, but as is the case with many youngsters, eventually grew bored and decided to make up his own game with the plastic chips, so we had little discs flying all over the place.  It was a lot of fun, and a memory I will have forever...I hope he does too, and this quilt will encourage him to retain that memory.

Linking up at Patchwork Times where I'll check back later to see what y'all have going on as I need to take Nick to school this morning so I can have the car to meet a friend for coffee.  It will be nice to get out and have some gal friend face time.