I've had this knight fabric in stash for years. Fussy cutting is not my favorite thing to do, and with tiled fabrics that's pretty much what is required. The knight fabric had larger spaces between the blocks than the Celtic knot fabric from my previous post, so it was much easier to deal with. Even though I had yardage of the knight fabric, I had drastically different numbers of each knight.
When I tried putting them up on the design wall in a random pattern, the fact that I had many more of certain knights was very obvious. I decided to try diagonal lines instead, using the knights I had more of in the longer diagonals. It almost works. I had two lines I couldn't make work exactly, so I stuck them in the bottom left corner. That's my tip for today, if something isn't working quite right, put it in the bottom left corner. Since we (as Americans as least) read top to bottom, left to right, I find most people start looking at a quilt in the top left corner, then scan across and down towards the bottom right hand corner. The bottom left hand corner is almost skipped. So if you've got a wonky block or two, try hiding it in the bottom left. 😉
I needed an alternate block to use between the knights. I needed the block to finish at 5", I didn't really feel like digging into yardage, but how would I make a 5" finished block with scraps? I mostly have 2" and 2.5" strips and squares. This will be a donation quilt. That doesn't mean at all that I don't want to make a nice quilt, but I am learning that they don't all have to be complicated. I realized if I surrounded a 2.5" square with 2" strips, I would indeed get a block that finished at 5". I have a box of 2.5" squares, and I dug out enough in appropriate colors to make the alternate blocks, then I went to my 2" strip stash and did the same. I only needed 16" of a 2" strip to surround a square. I needed two pieces at 2" x 2.5" and two pieces at 2" x 5.5" That means even strips I had cut from fat quarters were going to work!
When DH came into the sewing room to ask me something, he saw this quilt on the design wall and really liked it. I asked him if it looked like a scrap quilt. He said, "No, it's a knight quilt, why would you ask if it was a scrap quilt?" I told him it was 50% scraps, and that a lot of scrap quilt patterns only use 50% scraps. That surprised him, and he said it looked purposeful to him.
That comment made me really happy. I really like scrap quilts, but not everyone does. If I can "hide" scraps in a quilt that doesn't look like a scrap quilt, it's a win. I've assembled this quilt top now, and hopefully it will be basted soon. I love donating boys quilts especially. Not that I don't make plenty of girls quilts, I just especially like making quilts for boys and men.
I had planned a big basting spree, but that got hijacked by other commitments. Now I'll just have to try to get some quilts basted a couple at a time. I'm almost finished quilting the last basted quilt, but I still have several table runners basted that need quilting, so I'm not quite out yet, but basting needs to move up on the priority list.
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