Making an Irish Chain quilt has been on my to make list for some time. This spring our friends are having baby, so a gender neutral quilt is in order for them. While they are not finding out the gender of the baby, Rob and I came up with a theme. They live in Buffalo and love the Sabres and Bills. I’m sparing this child having something branded with these teams and setting it up for heartache. Ha!
The teams are the inspiration for colors on this quilt:
- gold/yellow
- black
- gray
- red
- navy
- white
My scrap bins had lots of great options to get started on this quilt. Pulling from a various sizes I decided 2″ squares would be the best.
It was a good start, but not enough for a baby quilt. I had pulled more fabrics and scraps to take with me to the IMQG Winter Retreat in case more blocks were needed. Turns out, I needed to make many more blocks, ~12. The finished nine patch block with two inch squares comes out to five inches square. It’s my normal size to work with, but the math wasn’t making sense until I laid out what I had made.
Luckily, some other guild members brought their scraps and were generous enough to share. I found some great fabrics to use within my colors and keep this quilt scrappy. Since I was running low on Kona White, I opted to use white on white fabrics or white as my background blocks.
Tip: When piecing blocks that have small pieces, have starch nearby to help keep seams flat. Starching my blocks as I pressed was a lifesaver as I pieced the quilt top once I got home from the retreat.
Overall I’m happy with the look of this quilt. Can’t wait to fully piece the top and see this come together.
