My Not-So-Scrappy Celebrations Quilt Top is Finished!

Good Morning and Happy Wednesday!  I managed to sew those (S)Crappy Celebration quilt blocks into a completed quilt top over the last couple days.  The quilt top measures exactly 54 1/2" x 63 1/2" with even edges and it's smooth and flat, so it should be a fast and easy one to quilt up with an edge to edge design on my long arm machine.  According to the guidelines on the Project Linus Metrolina Chapter web site, their greatest need is for "Teen" sized blankets and this quilt will fit those parameters perfectly.  Much better for this to be a finished quilt wrapped around a young person facing difficult life circumstances than for it to be an unfinished collection of blocks hidden away in a storage container in my closet.

Sidebar: Interesting that, at least for my local chapter, the greatest need is for Teen size quilts, as I always associated Project Linus with baby quilt donations.  Now, as I look at this very girly quilt I'm making for donation, I'm remembering hearing that quilting charities are usually short on quilts that are appropriate for boys and men.  I ought to post up the size guidelines for all of my local quilt donation organizations (Charlotte Quilters Guild, Project Linus, Lutheran World Relief, Sleep In Heavenly Peace) and make a deliberate effort from the start to make these "sidetrack, detour" projects in sizes and fabrics tailored to filling areas of greatest need.

54 1/2 x 63 1/2 Scrappy Celebration Quilt Top Finished

And now, let's recap what I learned from this project, starting with the photos I saw of Lissa Alexander's original Scrappy Celebration quilt:

Original Scrappy Celebrations Quilt by Lissa Alexander

Lissa Alexander's Scrappy Celebrations Quilt, AP&Q Cover Quilt in April 2023

(S)Crappy Celebration: Meh? + Stonefields Prep + Pineapple Log Cabin UFO

UGH.  You guys, I am sick of working on this project again!  I finished the blocks I was working on last week but it was such a chore coming up with a layout.  I really hate that I made 5 or 6 versions of each block in the exact same, or nearly the same fabrics, even though I thought that was a feature of the inspiration quilt that I liked and deliberately wanted to replicate when I was starting out.  I have begun mixing some stash fabrics in with the matchy-matchy Tilda prints, but it's not making me love it or anything.  

I find myself wishing this was two (or more) separate quilts.  I love a double 9-patch quilt with a white background and it would be pretty to have a rainbow version with each block a different dominant color.  The other blocks where I didn't use any white fabric, or very little white fabric, have a much heavier feel.  But I've made 42 of these 9" blocks already, enough for a 54" x 63" throw quilt with a 6x7 layout, and I feel like enough already.  Time to wrap this up and move on!

This is the best I could do on the layout, trying not to put identical blocks too close together if I could help it (sometimes I couldn't) and trying to balance out white background, lacy 9-patch blocks with the darker, not-enough-contrast blob blocks as best I could.  This is what we are dealing with:

54 x 63 (S)Crappy Celebration Layout

Checking value distribution in gray scale just to be sure:

Same Photo, in Gray Scale

Then I went to my EQ8 software to see whether adding sashing and cornerstones would improve the quilt at all: