Round Robin ABC Quilt

For the first time in more than a year, I have completed a quilt! Granted, I didn’t sew most of the blocks, but I sewed the equivalent number during my guild’s recent round robin sessions. That counts, right?

To each of the 12 1/2-inch (31.75 cm) blocks, I sewed a border with strips of fabric that were 3 1/2 inches (almost 9 cm) wide. Most of the fabrics were already featured in at least one block, but a few were new to the mix.

After sewing the blocks together in a four-by-four layout, I had just enough of the cut fabrics leftover to piece the backing. I pulled out a tub of batting scraps and pieced those together as well. One alphabet print remained unused; it became the bias binding.

The real challenge was the quilting itself. With the exception of one hand quilting project, all of my quilts for the past ten years or so have been sent to longarm quilters to be “quilted by check.”

I decided to quilt this one myself on my home sewing machine using an orange-red variegated thread. Since I’m out of practice, keeping it simple seemed like the best course of action. I quilted a basic 45-degree zigzag through the corners of the blocks and then at three-inch (7.6 cm) intervals as measured horizontally and vertically.

The finished quilt is six feet (1.8 m) square. It doesn’t fit any of the standard sizes for bed coverings, although it is large enough to be used for extra warmth on a bed. The quilt has already served as a sort of hopscotch game board.

I bought the alphabet fabrics gradually over many years without any plan in mind. Looking at the various colors and block layouts after the round robin sessions, I was told they couldn’t possibly work well together in one quilt. And yet, somehow, they do.

It felt good to make a quilt again. More will be coming soon!