Big Blue Plus

I like to cut up my scraps in to 2.5″ squares to use up the pieces and make scrappy quilts.  They are also really great as leaders/enders when chain piecing so the thread doesn’t get all tangly.  The last 2″ (finished) squares quilt I made was my Red and Blue Squares Quilt which I really loved, but MAN it was a pain to piece.  Lots and lots of seams to match up.

I cut up a lot of squares from my leftover Summer Sampler 2019 kit, as well as a few other things I had around, and was preparing to sew them all together randomly.  But then I saw a post from my friend Emily at The Darling Dogwood of her Postage Plus quilt.  Her quilt is awesome, and reminded me of the pattern by Cheryl of Meadow Mist Designs and Paige of Quilted Blooms from their book Modern Plus Signs.  I played around with that idea for awhile, making up patterns with the 2″ squares arranged in different shapes.  I have a few others in the works, but for now, I completed the Plus one first.

Here is the finished quilt:

I had a lot of fun playing with the quilting.  This is the first quilt I’ve done with the kind of ‘graffiti’ type quilting.  I’m really more of a planner so this was kind of hard for me.  I had to plan what larger motifs I wanted to do and kind of sketch them out, then do the fillers around them.

The only materials I bought for the quilt were for the blue strips.  I love the bold blue color!  The dark one is Kona Pacific, and the higher one is Kona Paris Blue.

I pieced the backing from things I had in my stash.  It’s kind of funky, but I like it.

Final Details:

  • Finished 40″x56″
  • Fat Quarter Shop Bamboo 50/50 Blend
  • So Fine#50, color #517 (a light yellow) in the plus 2″ squares.  Aurifil color (a medium blue) in the background.  Bottom Line #623 (light grey) in the bobbin
  • 283,262 total quilting stitches.

Link Ups:

  • This is a finish on my Q4’19 FAL list so I will be posting it on the FAL linky when it opens up at the end of the quarter.
3 thoughts on “Big Blue Plus”
  1. Ann, this is amazing!!!! Your quilting is stunning! It’s hard to pick a favorite part but I think for me it’s the lines in the squares within the plus that alternate directions–wow!

    Mine was from the Modern Plus Signs book, by the way, I just took out two of the ros of background to make it smaller–I don’t enjoy large quilts. It’s a great leaders and enders pattern! I love your version so much!!!

    1. Thank you! Like I told you (and said in the post) you were the inspiration for this. I had seen the pattern in the book, but only went back to it because I saw your quilt and your post. Thanks for the help!
      It was fun to quilt and to just play and experiment. It was also a great use for all my 2.5″ scraps!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.