Sunny Side Up Quilt

In the middle of this Covid mess, my daughter made this quilt - mostly to cheer herself up, I think.   The response on Instagram was so positive that she created a kit so others could make it too.  (BTW:  This is the Sunny Side Up quilt by A Crafty Fox for Westwood Acres Fabrics, and you can see her version on her blog.)

Thankfully, I was lucky enough to be able to get a kit.  This was the perfect quilt to make in an incredibly hot, rainy July with all that is going on in our world.

Amanda had a cute photo on her IG feed and I tried to imitate it, but wasn't terribly successful.  So this is my attempt to be artsy.  BTW, Amanda has some great cutting suggestions on the pattern that make cutting super easy, and soooo fast!

First, lots of sewing and trimming Half Square Triangles.  The task is kind of tedious, but tedium is not always a bad thing.  If your hands are busy, your mind can seldom focus for long on disagreeable things.

One of the things my girly does very well is choose low volume fabrics.  I would never have been bold enough to use all of these fabrics together without them being in the kit, but don't they play nice together in the finished product.  I will be more daring in my fabric choices the next time I make a quilt with LV background, for sure.

Also the way she puts her 9-patch blocks together is so easy.  She cuts her fabrics into strips, sews the strips together, and each strip becomes a row.  SO much easier (and faster!) than cutting bits of fabric and sewing them together individually.

I was really excited about my first Bear Paw block.  Too excited apparently, since I put it together wrong.  It wasn't until I posted it on Instagram and had several people tell me it wasn't right (thank you friends!) that I realized it. 

So a bit of ripping and resewing and I was on my way.  I was actually very glad I posted the picture - that way I didn't have to remake all the blocks!  You can bet I was extremely careful to check the fabric placement before I sewed the rest.

As you can see, I couldn't wait to get my first row finished.  I'm always kind of flabbergasted that quilts created "on point" go together so strangely.  Amanda has a clever method for making the trimming easy as you create the rows that is just fabulous.  see those bigger blocks hanging off the rows?  Those make trimming the quilt evenly a snap.

Progress being made.  Blocks going together.  Obviously my board isn't wide enough.

Getting there.  At this point, the quilt is half finished.

And now, all it needs is trimming, which I did just a few days ago.  If it ever stops raining, I'll get my "quilt husband" to venture outside with me to photograph some quilts.