ECQG Raffle Quilt–Dear Hannah

Brenda Papadakis of Dear Jane fame graciously gave her permission for us to use her Dear Hannah quilt patterns for our 2011 Raffle Quilt.  We will hold the drawing for the quilt at our quilt show in 2011.  We bought the Electric Quilt DVD of the patterns, as well as the book.  I used the DVD to blow up the pattern from the original 4 1/2 inch to 6 inch blocks.  I printed a color copy of each block, along with a line drawing and set up a notebook to turn over to the raffle quilt chair.

Carol then selected the fabric to use in the quilt.  The background is Kona black and there is an assortment of bright colors for the piecing and applique.  There are 143 blocks and she passed them out a couple of months ago.  We received all but one back.  Thankfully Carol had made a couple of extra blocks and brought them to the sew-in yesterday.

Since there are so many blocks, we worked on the top eight rows of the quilt and got that much put together yesterday.  This first photo is of the blocks on the design wall in the order of the original quilt.  We moved them quite a bit to get the colors spread throughout the quilt.

We then added a bottom and left side sashing to each block except the first block in each row.  We cut the sashing at 2 inches instead of 1 1/2.  After pressing the blocks, we cut each to 7 1/2, including sashing.  This allowed us to accommodate the slightly different sized blocks you always get from a group project.

By the end of the day, here is the top of the quilt.

Don’t the blocks look much better with the sashing?

Tomorrow is another sew-in and hopefully we will finish the top enough to sew on borders.

Melinda