A Happy Stripes Quilt

When I first saw Emily Dennis’ Happy Stripes  pattern, I knew I had to purchase it because it was a great stash buster pattern for 2.5” strips. If you seen my other quilts, you know that I love this combination. The fabric in my Happy Stripes quilt might look familiar since I just finished in April my Carrie Bloomston Unruly Patchwork Throw.

A little bit of happenstance with the making of the Happy Stripes quilt which made me wonder if I really have a Fairy Quilt Godmother in my studio. After I ordered the pattern and I was thinking of using my Carrie Bloomston stash since it was fresh on my mind after making the patchwork throw. I really do love my stash which includes several of her fabric lines which work so well together. I just so happened to see a purple tote bag sitting on the bottom of my project cart and decided to look to see what was inside. It contained approximately 150 2.5” strips cut from my Carrie Bloomston stash maybe last year and had forgotten about it. I just needed to die-cut 25 more strips and HSTs from the Newsprint fabric and I was ready to make this quilt.

Over 60 different prints were used. After grouping the strips in sets of four, there were sixteen different combinations,  After sewing the strip sets which made four rail blocks, the connecting corners were sewn on different sides of the rail blocks so it would look like there were more combinations.

The Flimsy was finished by the end of May and I had to wait until after my busy June was over before I could finally machine quilt the Happy Stripes quilt.

No surprise with the machine quilting with my go-to combination of straight and wavy lines with CT Essential Thread in #20858 Stone. The binding was a Stoffabric gray/black dot print with gold metallic and not from the Carrie Bloomston stash since there wasn’t enough yardage of a solid print which would work and  I thought a scrappy binding would look too busy. Lucky me for just purchasing a yard of this print when I was in Colorado last month.

The Master Quilt Holder had a little trouble holding up this 64”x88” quilt to show some of the backing which is the Pueblo Stripe print from the Carrie Bloomston stash. I purchased beaucoup yardage of this several years ago from Bernie Kringle’s Needle and Foot Shop and I knew one day I would make a quilt to finally  use it.

Here’s another photo of the Happy Stripes quilt. A sad note about the finishing of it; after spending Saturday and Sunday with friends with holiday get togethers,  my plan was to spend the Fourth of July machine quilting. Instead, I spent the morning and early afternoon glued to the television because of the awful shooting at a parade which happened in a town just 27 miles away. This is a beautiful town I am familiar with, visited and even dreamed of living there. I finally made it to my studio late afternoon and quilted with a heavy heart once again. It is days like these which I find comfort in quilting and it’s happening much too often.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation/NTT