November XOXO Quilt

Ok, so it's been 6 months since my last blog post.  Time flies when you're applying for tenure, teaching, taking care of various people.  I actually have accomplished some quilting during this time.

This first quilt I made over the course of about a couple of weeks in November.  Our friend and neighbor was hospitalized, so I made a quilt for him so he could stay warm in his easy chair in between medical treatments. 

Here is the final result:

This was an easy quilt to piece.  It just has one block!  I had seen similar quilts online, so I just figured out how to make the block by looking at pictures.  However, there is a nice video tutorial from the Missouri Star Quilt Company that explains how to make this type of quilt.

Each block takes one 5" square and two 2.5" squares that match each other.  This is great for using up (a small portion of) the scrap bin.

I was not quite so fastidious as the quilting video method- I simply lined up the 2.5" squares with the corners of the 5" squares and sewed - no pre-ironed creases.

It took a lot of rearranging to figure out where to place the light and dark X's and O's.  At first, I arranged the X's and O's in a linear fashion like a tic-tac-toe board, but it just didn't look right with this scrappy quilt.  So, I offset the rows.

The back ended up looking somewhat scenic with some trees and a swath of blue fabric from the local Gift n' Thrift.  I kept the quilting very simple because I'm still not very good at it, and I had very little time to get this done.

Woohoo!  Washed and ready to go.