Inspiration: Little Playmates Quilt

For years, I’ve been buying and collecting novelty prints of little kids and toys, with the intention of making two matching quilts for the grandkids’ bunk room.  The inspiration for this pattern comes from Lynn Dash’s Playmates Quilt in the May 2001 issue of McCall’s Quilting Quick Quilts.  We haven’t been able to find it anywhere else.  I did simplify the corner blocks from a regular nine patch by combining the two solid squares. The big blocks are basically five solid squares and the nine patches in the corners, with the background (or polka dots) pointing toward the center. There are twelve big blocks in each quilt, and I’m using twelve different prints since I’ve been able to collect that many.  You could easily do each block with a fat quarter, but since I’m doing two quilts I’ve had to piece a little bit extra here and there.The polka dot is really the background fabric, because it will be used for sashing as well.  The sashing is really cool and inventive, because it will make a star in the corner of each intersection.  We’ll show you when and how it’s done!This is a project that I’ve been planning for a long time, and it’s fun to see it finally come together.  We are also working on a lot of things (new patterns!) behind the scenes for the upcoming Salt Lake City Spring Quilt Market, here in our backyard.  Most of these things we won’t be able to show you for a couple of months, but we do have some other fun things coming to the blog soon.  Wishing you a warm spring!