Windblown Quilt

Although I should be sewing pioneer dresses for the Pioneer Trek my two daughters, my husband and I are going on  this July, I’m not.  I really just want to be quilting.  It seems the older my kids get, the busier I am and the less time I have to quilt.  And I really want to quilt!  So, I finished my girls Easter skirts (I even made one for myself.) and decided to finish up a quilt I had been working on for the past few months before I moved on to Trek dresses.  I saw a vintage quilt with this pattern and loved it.  I flipped through my handy dandy 501 quilt blocks book and the closest pattern I could find is called ‘Windblown’.  The only difference in the pattern is the outside corners have half square triangles.  So, I’m calling the pattern ‘Windblown’.  If you know it by another name, please let me know.

I really love this quilt.  I picked up the solid blue last summer with the idea of making a vintage looking quilt.  I just love the old quilts that used solid colors as the background. The blue in the Sweetwater line “Road 15” matched perfectly, so I used two charm packs to create the half square triangle blocks.  (Also, I was so excited to find that my street address was on this fabric I had to make a quilt from it!)  Each block is a finished 16” so the final quilt size is 64 x 80.

I did learn a very valuable lesson while making this quilt.  I felt so guilty sewing this quilt when I should have been sewing dresses, I hurried through and thought it would be alright to not square up my half square triangles.  I know it was an awful thing to do and I paid the price!  When it came time to square up my 16” blocks, I had to chop off the tips of the triangles to make each block square.   Argh! There was nothing else I could do.  I felt awful.  So don’t look too closely, but this quilt is far from perfect.  On the good side, I was happy to try out a new quilting pattern without too much stress about not liking it and I figure this will be a great cuddle/play quilt.  I don’t know about you, but the better, perfect point, high effort quilts I make are hard for me to let people use.  They are display only.  It’s the practiced on, points cut off, mistakes a plenty quilts that are the good cuddle, tent building, sick child comforting quilts.  I know that I am the only one who will care about it’s lack of perfection.  This quilt will join the pile with the other much loved, movie nights and popcorn quilts.   So I’m happy.  Lesson learned.

Stormy