Lassie
September 2021

This quanket combines many scraps from Toodles, a quilt I made for my nephew Dexter, six years ago. The colorway is very mid-century modern. The avocado, browns, teals and oranges have made these fabrics a bit of a challenge to incorporate into other quilts over the past six years, not only because of their strong color personality, but also because the colors are all very saturated. I felt the linen color for the background provided the neutrality needed to compliment these strong colors.

This scrappy quilt began by sewing the small’ish scraps (most under 4″x3″), combining them with the solid linen and avocado colored fabrics. I constructed 12″ blocks, but wasn’t happy with how they looked once they were up on my design wall*. So, I used a trick I learned many year’s ago when making Calm Reflection, of cutting the block in half, and flipping it around to create a new design. The technique was one I had found on wont-to-be quilter’s blog, however, I can no longer find the instructions there. Please drop me a comment with your email address if you would like me to send to you. I made ‘Lassie’ as a quanket, finishing it with fleece backing.

“Did you ever see a lassie go this way and that (way)?”
~ Roud Folk Song Index number 5040

This quanket was donated for a child in foster care in October, 2021.

*While the picture of my design wall doesn’t have this latest quanket on it, I thought you might like to see what my design wall looks like. It is a piece of 1/2″ styrofoam insulation covered with felt, measuring roughly 5’x6′. My murphy-style cutting table is immediately behind my sewing machine, a 1950’s Singer 401a, slant-o-matic. The cabinet for the fold-up cutting table has a blackboard backing, so I can keep notes for my current projects. The sewing machine was my grandmothers, and the one she used to teach me to sew over 50 years ago.