The Circus is Coming

Two friends each have two little kids that I want to make quilts for. Jodi has two year old Emily and two month old Alexa and Andrea has two year old Jolene and two or three week old Brett. That's three girls and one boy to be clear (Joe has a niece Brett). I have lots of kids prints but started with the circus prints I used last year for Edua. Above is the first top finished. Below a bit of elaboration about how it got there.

Started with a batik fat quarter and the circus print. Stitched two strips together then using 45 degree angle line, cut half square triangles (above) - using the tube method described (badly) below.

As usual, I was just playing/experimenting with fabric. I stitched a narrow red strip to a wider batik strip (above), then stitched those to a wide circus print strip (below). The circus strip width was equal to the total of the batik and red - taking seam allowance into consideration. The wide circus strip is stitched to both edges of the red/batik to form a tube.

With the 45 degree line lined up on the stitching, slice the triangle. Flip the tube over, slice off another triangle. When they are opened out, they look like the half square triangles above. There are any number of possibilities of strip width combinations for this method - so go crazy!

I made two kinds of blocks using the resulting half square triangles, as per above.

I cut apart the three circus stripe motifs, then put a row of pin wheels between the bottom two and a row of half square triangles between the top two to spread out the "picture" a bit (above). I ran a one inch red zinger around the "picture" and then the block formations to each end. Finally, added a border that was mitered at the corners to keep the stripe effect going around the quilt. Once it's quilted I'll do a red binding.

I'm thinking of making a number of quilts and letting the Moms choose which ones they would like. I'll see how things go in that regard. I tend to get bored doing the same thing too much so I know I will not be able to sustain a push for making only kids quilts for awhile. In fact, I have my next unconventional project in mind that I'm very excited about!