Around the Table
June 2015

This is a framed squares quilt pattern. The center of each square came from a donation I received of a book of tablecloth samples. Carol reached out to me though my blog to let me know she had several tablecloth sample books that she would love to see used in a quilt. Thank you Carol for your donation!

The inspiration for the name was twofold: the first is obvious, that they were actually tablecloth samples. The second is perhaps not as obvious. As I sat sewing this quilt, I thought a lot about the many fond memories I have of gatherings around a table: Birthday celebrations, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with family and friends; times spent when my two girls were little playing games at the table and now with them and their families playing games around the table! The name Around the Table just seemed right for this one.

The overall design was inspired by Melanie over at Catbird Quilt Studio. I came across Melanie’s blog last month, and love how she uses borders in her medallion quilts. This is the perfect technique when quilting predominately with scraps, as it allows a quilt to grow to the desired dimension with (somewhat) ease and beauty. I only had enough of the tablecloth pieces in the chosen color values to get me to roughly 35″x50″. So, I borrowed a page from Melanie and added a border! The finish size came in right around 4’x5′, which is the size I aim for when making quankets for kids. The frames around the tablecloth sample pieces were all scraps from previous projects, while the edge binding was a new piece. When done, there were over 70 different fabrics that went into this quilt!

I donated this quanket to Diana Jasany’s Girl Scout Gold Award project. You can follow Diana’s journey on her Facebook page. I am so thrilled to have found two kindred spirits over the past month who make quilts for foster kids: the fist being Nita who blogs at Because You Matter and now Diana!