Well, what do you know. I finished a quilt. I have been slowly plugging away at the binding, and now the quilt is finished. Our quilt guild is participating in a fund raiser for a local nursing home with low income residents. This quilt will be part of the silent auction.

And here's the reason the binding took so long. These I-spy blocks are addicting. Happily I cut a gazillion and three I-spy patches, so I will be able to enjoy this addiction for quite a while longer.

I have been working on the I-spy quilt in batches. Can you tell that its getting bigger?

After I finish sewing for the day, I iron the blocks and put them up on the design wall in no particular order. ( except for spelling names, of course.) I do notice that the batches reflect daily favorite color choices--for example teal and yellow. Another day might favor blue and orange. I'm going to make all of the blocks and wedges into blocks and then pick and choose particular blocks I think my grand nephew might like.

Here's a close-up of some of the blocks.

Tommy has taken over my sewing chair and I sometimes push him from one side of the room to the other so he can have a different point of view. Here he says "I spy neglect!"

The I-spy quilt continues to grow and is still a lot of fun.

Tommy is not afraid of prints either.

This is fun to sew. And if I thought a little more about color placement I might be able to get some zig-zagging z's working their way down the quilt.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am working on a tilted square I-spy quilt for my grand-nephew. I may have gotten carried away because I looked through all of my novelty fabric and fussy cut a few hundred squares with good images for a 3 inch square. Unfortunately I have now learned that three-year old boys don't have king sized beds, so I may have cut too many squares.

I did successfully edit and re-sort my novelty fabric. I even uncovered a significant area of floor space. And more to the point, I have decided that keeping the novelty fabric separate means that it is often left out of quilts. I have learned from the Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilt blog that novelty prints can really add zest and fun to a scrappy quilt. And with that in mind, here is a kitten made of kittens on a bright green background. If you can't get enough of bright green, I suggest you check out what others are making during the month of August at the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge.

I haven't been a big fan of I-spy quilts until I saw the blog banner of QuiltNCards. I just love that wonky tilt. There seems to be quite a few ways to construct a tilted block. This is how I did it...although I did experiment around with various sizes until I came up with this. First, the center block is a fussy cut 3.5 by 3.5 inch square.

Next I cut two rectangles 3 inches by 5.5 inches.  I then make a mark a half inch down on the left side and a half inch up on the right side and slice through at those points. And let me warn you. If you want the I-spy block to tilt to the left, the diagonal cut has to look like the one above. And trust me I have learned this lesson several times.

Last but not least, the construction requires partial seams. Extra fun!  First, sew on one of the lopped-off triangles but only sew about an inch or two down the I-spy square. Next, sew the triangle that is counterclockwise from the one you've just sewn. Sew this triangle all the way across the I-spy block and the edge of the partially sewn triangle. Continue to add the sides like a log cabin block, working counterclockwise. The final step is finishing the partially sewn seam. Then press. But be careful because the edges to the block are on the bias and will easily stretch out of shape.

Tommy is calculating how many blocks I would have to make to use up my novelty fabric but says he lost count when he reached 1,000,003.

Although you can't really tell from this photo, I have finished quilting the red, white and blue Placid Curves quilt (based on Amy Ellis' pattern in Modern Neutrals). Now I am sewing on the binding. The sewing machine that was acting up when I was piecing the Omigosh quilt behaved beautifully throughout the machine quilting.

The quilt will be donated for a silent auction in November. I expect I'll be able to finish the binding by then.

Tommy really didn't want his picture taken, but he thought this blog needed the gravitas that only a cat picture can provide.