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| Bright Tones 2005 |
The Mystery Quilt is coming along and there have been lots of e-mail from the discussion site. Some posts are off-topic and one caught my eye today.
Diane mentioned she was looking for a quilt pattern and wanted to use music themed fabric. It reminded me of "Bright Tones", a quilt I made in 2005 for the high school Band and Orchestra fundraiser. I think I made up the pattern, though it's likely I was inspired by a pattern I had seen somewhere in a magazine. I was looking for a quick and easy quilt that would have a random block look.
I'll try to reconstruct the cutting instructions from looking at the photo. Please let me know if any corrections need to be made. I'm a stingy fabric cutter, so you might want to get a little extra for 'oopsies'.
The quilt is 60x75 inches. It takes 2 yards large print focus fabric (musical instruments in this case). One half yard secondary print fabric (white sheet music on black background for me).
The pattern is based on an 8 inch finished block, (8 1/2 inches cut. ) So, the pictured quilt is 5 blocks by 7 blocks.
The individual blocks are:
A) 8 1/2 inch focus fabric blocks. Cut 11.
B) Four-patch blocks made up of four 4 1/2 inch squares and C) Two halves of the four-patch within the same row which gives a little more random look to the rows. Make 8 four-patch blocks and 10 two-patch blocks.
D) A 6 1/2 inch cut block of the secondary print with smaller 2 1/2 inch cut squares on two sides. Sew a strip of three small squares and add to one side of the larger square. Stitch four small squares together and then stitch them to an adjacent side of the block. (The side only matters if the secondary print is directional and you want the blocks all facing the same way.) Make 3 blocks.
E) This block is cut a little big and trimmed. It uses a 5 3/4- inch cut block of the secondary print, and 3 1/4-inch cut squares on two sides. Sew a strip of two small squares and add to one side of the larger square. Then sew three small squares together and add that strip to an adjacent side of the larger block. Trim this block about a quarter inch on two sides so it is 8 1/2 inches squared up. Make 8 blocks.
Before cutting the first border, measure up your quilt top. Then put together the pieced border. Measure to make sure that 2 inches finished is the inner border width you need to get these two to match up. Math is one thing, reality can be another.
The first border is cut 2 1/2 inches if you don't need to make any adjustments. Cut an additional set of 2 1/2 inch strips for binding. (About 7 WOF strips each)
The second border is made up of 4 1/2 inch cut squares of the bright colors. The outer border is 4 1/2 inches cut of the large scale print. I used 52 colored blocks and the four corners were my secondary print. I think it was because I ran out of the colors. The rows are:
A E B A E
E C A C D B
C A C E B A
E B A B D
C A E B A C
D B C A C E
C A C E B A
The rows with the split 4 patch (as two C blocks) will have one extra block letter.
Finally, the outer border is cut 4 1/2 inches from the large print focus fabric. It takes 7 WOF strips. If you would like a wider border it certainly would look nice, but make sure you have about 1/4 yard of additional focus fabric for each additional inch in border width.
This was such a fun quilt to make! Bright Tones of course refers both to the bright colors, and the sound of the music itself. Those high school band days are long behind us now. (sigh) I really do miss attending concerts and hearing our kids play. Cherish those days while they last. Our youngest graduated from college this month, and will be off on his own with his first job and apartment in just a week or so. He's been looking through the quilt photo album to pick a few quilts to bring with him!
Well, when 'moving day' is over perhaps there will be more time to Quilt Awhile.
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