40 Years Scrappy Quilt

Maybe it's because we've only recently had Valentine's Day - for some reason I'm feeling a little sentimental and want to show you the bed quilt that I made to celebrate our Ruby Wedding.

This design divides my quilt into 9 sections measuring 24" x 28" and each section, apart from the centre, is made up from the same 7 basic blocks.
All the measurements that I give do NOT include the seam allowance. So we have:

9 pieced blocks 14" x 14" like these

It always surprises me how the same block looks so different depending on placement of light and dark fabrics. In the centre square I wrote out some sayings using my fabric pen, and also added a little embroidery.

8 appliqued hearts blocks 12" x 10"

These hearts all have patches representing all the times my heart has been broken and mended ...... :)
Each heart is sewn onto a 4" x 6" rectangle and the top and bottom borders are 2" wide.

8 vase of flowers blocks 8" x 12" 

These show all the bunches of flowers that I have never received ..... :)
The flowers and vases are appliqued onto various sizes of calico and then random width borders are added to make the block the right size.

8 scrappy blocks 10" x 10" 

These are made up of two 6" x 4" scrappy rectangles, joined by a 6" x 2" strip and with a 10" x 2" strip sewn on both sides.

20 nine patch blocks 6" x 6" - 2 of these in each section and 4 in the centre

12 stripey blocks 12" x 4" like this with the stripes of random widths.

Finally there are 2 strips of fabric 2" x 12" and 2" x 8" in each section apart from the centre. Mostly I just cut these from my stash, but I also had some stripey bits leftover which I used.

All these blocks are put together in a different way for each section. This is one of them where I've drawn around the blocks in grey.

And these are all the sections:

Can you see that they're only slightly different - the hearts and stripes have changed places as have the flowers and the 2" x 12" strip
And similarly with the pairs below

.

and the 14" pieced block is in a different corner for each of the four pairs.

The centre section looks like this

This is a link to a printer friendly pic of the quilt with all the different blocks marked out on it and also measurements for the 14" pieced square.
40 years scrappy bed quilt

Originally I hadn't intended to put sashing between the sections and now rather regret that I did. This is what it would look like without them:

Much more interesting ..........or do I mean messy!!??

I finished the quilt with a 2" plain border and a 2" strippy border using some of the fabrics already in the quilt.

So after all these years of marriage - almost 45 now, how do I know that he still loves me? Well, sometimes he brings me breakfast in bed (far more often than I really care to admit to!) and he arranges my fruit in a pattern on top of the cereal just to make me smile.

Sew Happy - Anita