I've finally made some progress on my 3rd and newest quilting project. My 2nd project the Jelly Roll Quilt is in the pile of quilt tops waiting to be quilted. The back and everything is ready to go to the longarm quilter.

Back to my Smooth Sailing fabric bundle, by Ryan Walsh, pictured above (all fabrics). Each piece of fabric is a fat quarter and measures 18 inches by 22-1/2 inches. There are 16 fat quarters. 

Bev drew the pattern that i'm going to use, actually she drew two versions, and I'm going to do the bottom one in the picture above, which has the patterns off-set.

I graphed out (with Bev's help and expertise) the 18 by 22 fat quarter area, on graph paper and proceeded to figure out how many squares I could get out of a fat quarter. See the picture above!

Bev helped me pair the different fat quarters according to colors that matched best (see picture above with just 12 fabrics), and each pair is a plain fabric and a patterned fabric. The plain, less patterned ones will be cut to create the background fabrics around the chains. The ones with patterns will be cut to form the links of the chain.

We wanted to make the quilt top 7 blocks by 7 blocks, but there isn't quite enough fabric in the fat quarter pieces to get 7 blocks. So we will start with 6 blocks by 6 blocks, and because they are off-set, we may be able to do 6-1/2 by 6 blocks. After I cut the squares and strips, we will see where we end up.

I think this is going to be fun. I didn't realize that it would take such planning before I could even get the rotary cutter and start cutting fabric.

I only hope I will be able to make all the points look sharp when I sew the pieces together. I will probably finish the quilt with a 5 and a 3 inch border. It will be a lap quilt it looks like by the finished size.

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