Presenting my first finish of 2020: Sea Glass.

I started piecing this quilt in March of 2019, when I was hip-deep in quilting The Color of Time on my domestic machine. At some point, I needed a break from wrestling the giant quilt so I decided — why not? — to start a new project.

The pattern for this quilt is called Saturday Morning and was designed by Kathryn Jones. I found it in an old copy of Down Under Quilts (isn’t it great, what you can pick up at Friends of the Library sales?) from 2017. I modified it a little to add the white space around the edges. The original pattern has the patchwork extending out to the binding.

I finished it on February 2 and gifted it to a friend shortly after that.

One of my goals for this project was to use only fabrics and binding that I already had in my stash. I had a couple of layer cakes from the L’s Modern Basics collection by Lecien Fabrics lying around, so I pulled all the blue, teal, green, and yellow fabrics from there and started with those. I had some Kona cotton in Snow and one of the greys, I’m not sure which, so I used those for the hourglass blocks.

After I’d made all the gray and white hourglass blocks and cut all the print patches, I laid everything out on my design wall. I discovered that I really didn’t like the yellows in there. I had thought that they would add bright points, but they were just distracting. I left it up on the wall for about a week while I considered, but in the end, I pulled all the yellows out. I love my design wall.

I didn’t have any of the L’s Modern Basics left in the colors I needed, so I pieced a few squares from scraps and also raided my stash for similar colors. I was better pleased with the layout at this point, but something still bothered me. I finally realized that I wanted a border around the edges, so I pulled out the snow and grey leftovers and made enough blocks to go around the edge. I alternated all-white blocks with half-hourglasses, completing all the gray squares and giving the quilt a more finished look.

I also wanted to use fabrics from my stash for the backing. I found some large pieces, but none that I liked for this project that were large enough to use alone. So I pulled a few blues and blue-greens, and some of the gray prints from my L’s Modern Basics layer cake, and pieced the backing with those.

Then it was time to quilt it! This one went quickly and I love how it came out. I chose a simple design of puzzle pieces. I used the square blocks as a guide, turning each one into one piece of the puzzle. It was fun and quick to quilt.

The finished quilt has a soft, drapey feel and it crinkled up beautifully once I washed it.

While composing this post, weeks after finishing and gifting the quilt, I just noticed for the first time that one of the hourglass blocks is in the wrong position. It’s that way in the layout with the yellows, so I obviously carefully preserved its wrongness throughout the process, and it’s wrong in the finished quilt, too. Well, every quilt needs a humility block. Hah! Extra points if you can find it.

Welcome to the world, Sea Glass!