Heritage Squares

This quilt was made by my fiercely quilty family for a cousin's wedding.  It is super scrappy!  We actually made this in a weekend sewing extravaganza, but we each came with a handful of blocks already pieced plus some ready to assemble- so we might have cheated a little bit.  OK- Actually even with the "cheating" we just barely got all the blocks made and laid out onto the floor by the time everyone had to leave.  But then I spent the next couple weeks tweaking the layout; shuffling a block around here and there, looking at it without glasses or contacts, in the light, in the dark, squinting really hard, looking from the corner of my eye, from close up, and from a distance to try and get the lights in the center, darks in the 2 opposite corners, and then the mediums in the opposing corners.  It took some time and effort but I think the resulting effect was well worth it.

Looking at these pictures now, I still see some blocks that perhaps should have been switched around.  But it got kinda tricky because we had duplicates of some of the pieced blocks, and some of the spacer squares were repeats too, so making sure that no 2 fabrics were next to each other got challenging after a while. 

For the quilting I did wiggle-waggle-loop-loop-loop, and repeat.  I stayed in the dark parts and left the little light squares unquilted which resulted in a somewhat trapuntoed effect. 

To give you an idea of the scale- the spacer blocks were 5 inch squares and the littler white squares are 3/4 inch squared finished.  This Heritage Squares pattern was featured in the Sept./Oct. 2005 Quiltmaker magazine.  I really love how it turned out- as did the bride and groom.  I kinda want to make another one now.  :)