1 | Scrappy Swiss Cross Quilt: the Plan

I’ve got a lot of things up in the air this semester, but I’d like to see if I can actually find a few minutes each day to work on a quilt that I desperately need to make for my bed, the one we use now is shredding, and although I’ve got a couple of older quilts I could (and probably should be) using, I’ve had this idea running around in my mind for a long time now. So I’m going to try to commit to doing something on this project for #15minutesaday!

I’m a big fan of design blogs, they’re my eye candy! Often times things that are “trendy” in the design world excite me for a little while, but then I quickly tire of them. However, the Swiss Cross pattern has continued to hold my eye for a LONG time now, and I still don’t get tired of it!

Here’s one example of it:

I’ve got a whole pinterest board full of Swiss Cross Inspiration, check it out here.

This pattern is most often done in 2 colors, often combining black, white, grey or red. I’m a big fan of bi-color quilts, but…I’m also a big fan of color! So, I decided that I wanted to create a quilt  that had many different tones of the same color for the background, then lots of bright colors for the crosses. One of the goals I’d like to work on with this quilt is to use lots of scraps, and I’ve got lots of bright color scraps!

Because Stirling spends part of each night on our bed, I started planning for a quilt with a navy background. My first drafting of the quilt (using Electric Quilt 7, love this program) used 15″ blocks, so 6 x 7 blocks gave me a quilt sized 91″ x 106″, a nice healthy size for our queen size quilt:

When I imagined it on the bed, however, I wished that I’d have a column of crosses right down the center, rather than a seam. So I tried a smaller block, 12.5″ square instead of 15, adding one more row and column:

The quilt is a couple of inches smaller, 88″ x 101″, but still plenty big for a queen size. I showed this to hubby, explaining about the dark background to hide Stirling fur, and he pointed out that a lot of Stirling’s fur is white and grey!

So, change of plans! Grey background for the win!

There’s more contrast with the grey background, I’m actually happier with this color combo, and yay, it will be hard to see Stirling fur! To make sure that there’s enough hanging over the sides and the bottom, I placed a proportionately sized rectangle the same size as my queen size mattress on the plan:

Yep, this looks about right! I don’t need as much at the top as I like to make the bed with pillows on top of the quilt.

Now, I’ve got a lot of blocks to make before I need to think about backing, but I’ve already got an idea from the classic Swiss Army blanket:

I quickly mocked up a few different color combos:

I’m not sure if any of these combos will be the final one, but mmmmmm I’m loving the design!

This quilt has been in my head for months, I’m extremely excited that when I actually mock it up I am still excited by it! I really think that I could manage do work on these #15minutesaday each day…and that I could make some real headway that way!