Quillow-I SPY Concentration with Scraps

Plan the Quillow

For  my Grandson

You can use paint on your laptop to map out your plan and figure yardage

You can put a handle on the quillow or make a separate little tote bag so they can use it as a picnic or play throw anywhere

add a little pillow on the top edge and they can use it as a nappy sack

The blocks are 10 inch using scraps

with an item in the center

Put Your small square in the middle and then fill in your block with scrap strips, so you use up all your scraps.

I first cut out all the pairs of small squares and laid them in a pile, and then just grabbed scraps and filled in the blocks after sewing the first small square on.

You could have a theme, Vegetables, Animals,

I am using my scraps from masks-so it is everything

B H or F  whatever your kids call it
Burger and fries block

P
Potato Chip Block

Whale Block-W

Truck Block-T

Kayak Block-K

I have 32 blocks- to I spy- 16 that repeat once somewhere

Each Center picture to have a solid color block cover that has the letter of the name on the front

flap underneath and a number of the sequence it is in on the quilt top.

After putting all the blocks out and figuring where they are going on the quilt- Numbers will be put on the front top of the flap so that you can say--  Number 5    or Number 7 and try to match the squares word items -like concentration....

I spy a  5 .....  matching I spy a  10

Learning Numbers and Letters and words and pictures all on one quilt....  Great quiet time game with themselves too!

You can make bigger quillow and do 52 blocks or more

To figure the yardages for the back- we know we want to match the front size of  92.5 length and 60 wide

We have three pieces that are 1/1/4 yards preshrunk to 40-41 inches wide and we figure the side borders subtract them out and then we know what they take up of 92.5

we need to make the 40 inch preshrunk measure add up to 60 inches... so we add a wide strip of color to the pieces to add up to total 60

we take the length we want subtract the borders and divide by 3 for the size of the pieces

Our front is 92.5 finished-subtract out borders = 85 1/2 divided by 3 = each piece 29 becomes 28 1/2 x 3 = 85 1/2 center only have 27

so add 2 and 2 

So 30 middle 27

bottom 30

The pillow pocket is one third of the measure of  the width

makes a nice 20 x 20 throw pillow and if you add a handle it is a great tote a long blanket throw
Step one  Plan

Step two-to motivate I sew the back together first without the borders..

then

Step Three - Make all the squares and lay them out on the back to see how to make the border frames to fill the size of the front

Step Four - sew the front together to the exact size it will be

Step Five - add the filler strips before the borders on the back to make the matching size to the front before its frame in borders

Step Six Finish the back
Step Seven - do a really cute pillow pocket and handles

Step Eight -Sandwich and plan the freemotion quilting

You can do a smaller quilt  just for play

There are 26 letters in the Alphabet so I wont have all the letters in the alphabet repeat

Pairs of everything so they can play concentration

In my case, I bought quarter yards of bright colored marble blender fabrics for the flap that goes over the I Spy concentration pic

Be back with more pics as I finish Steps

I...decided to quilt the back so I could freemotion differently than the front... so there will be a piece of flat batting on the back with quilting and the blocks will be sewn together with borders on the front.... then I can free motion just in the borders for fun before attaching the front to the back in a sandwich.  Then I will probably machine tie quilt at corners and center of blocks.... we will see what I come up with...

Sometimes people say .."How do you do all these things at once?"   I cut multiples... I have an accuquilt cutter and dies for letters... but in this case I had to make stencils for the numbers.. so it went like this

1.

I had a piece of plain cardboard that came in a package with a description.. lightweight like posterboard.

2.

I had a piece of create-a-pattern leftover from making a pattern from someones dress... if you do not know what this is... it comes double wide but looks sort of like interfacing but wider and just pellon type so it doesn't rip like your pattern tissue and easily folded.  I use it to make patterns, and then put the patterns in marked ziplocks.  There are scraps left over...so here is a case where the scraps came in handy - just like this whole quilt, but the back that was bought.

3.

I searched for a stencil pic on the laptop... made it the size I needed for these quiltblocks-prt sc (print screened) the picture and then pasted onto paint..

cropped it to the stencil piece and laid my create-a-pattern piece onto the screen-used a marker and traced off my laptop screen on paint and then voila... stencils... laid on top of the poster board cardboard and cut around the number... 

4.

lay a stack of fabric of different colors so I would have different colors of each number and cut around multiples.

Now this ISPY will also learn letters and numbers and can play concentration at nap time with themselves or during quiet time with others.

5.

Cutting many at once saves time and you are able to duplicate your projects by have the multiples ready after finishing one project to do a second.

I do the same thing with tops-jackets-and pants,etc.. cut out multiples and they are ready to sew more than one.