Yet Another New Project That Isn't A Skirt: Anders' Modern Building Blocks Quilt

Anders' Modern Building Blocks, 70" x 96", drafted in EQ7

Look, I made a new quilt on the computer last night! This one is going to be for my soon-to-be-thirteen-year-old son, Anders.

Anders' Froggy Quilt of Many Colors, a dizzyingly busy I Spy novelty print quilt completed in 2003 for his third birthday, has seen better days:

Anders' Froggy Quilt of Many Colors, 2003

How I struggled to get those flying geese with practically perfect points!

The Embroidered Quilt Label

Ten years later, that frog quilt is looking awfully childish, and it's also literally disintegrating.  He needs a new bed quilt sooner rather than later, so add that to my LONG list of things to do...  And I can't take three years to make this new quilt, because the current bed quilt won't last that long. 

...And Another Quilt, Loved Literally to Death!

I haven't made him a new one yet because he was VERY ATTACHED to this one and every time I brought up the idea of making a new quilt, he got upset and declared (LOUDLY!) that he wanted to keep his frog quilt FOREVER.  But now that his thirteenth birthday is coming up (in three days!), he finally has conceded that his room needs an update for his teen years and it's time for a new quilt.

So, remember that Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt that everyone was buzzing about two years ago?  I admired it when I first saw it, but didn't consider making one because I didn't know what I'd do with it, plus I was up to my eyeballs in so many other quilts-in-progress at the time.  As usual.

Original Moda Modern Building Blocks Quilt, 84" x 96" at Quilt Market in 2014

In case you haven't seen this quilt before, it was a wildly popular pattern that Moda put out to promote their fabrics, and you can still get that pattern here if you want to make an 84" x 96" quilt like theirs.  I liked this quilt when I first saw it, but it popped into my radar again recently because Greg over at Grey Dogwood Studio just posted photos of his finished version using Fig Tree fabrics with a few prints mixed in:

Made by Greg of Grey Dogwood Studios

Isn't that gorgeous?  I love every quilt Greg makes, seriously.  The color palette of both versions of this quilt, the Moda original using all solids and the Fig Tree version with a few soft prints, is part of what makes it so interesting -- these aren't super bright primary colors, but they aren't quite pastels, either.  Anyway, this color palette isn't going to work for my son's room because he is adamant about keeping his dark green walls and the red-framed red-eyed tree frog painting that my mom made for him, and I am adamant about not changing the expensive hand printed Italian wallpaper in his bathroom (I know, what was I thinking, right?  It's an occupational hazard of being an interior designer.  I did have the paper sealed when it was installed, which is why is still looks great).

Anders' Bedroom in 2011, right after the bathroom wallpaper was installed

My idea for updating his room now that he's a teenager (as of this Saturday!) without changing it drastically is to paint over the juvenile wallpaper border and make it a wide navy blue stripe edged with narrower red stripes.  That, along with a new quilt in solid fabrics rather than novelty frog prints, should help the room "grow up" a little without Anders feeling like I totally changed everything.  So I had to alter the color palette of the Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt, but I also had to resize it to fit a twin bed.  I like to make my kids' quilts an XL Twin size, 96" long, because that way they wrap under the foot of the bed more securely and don't end up on the floor every morning from the Midnight Boogie or whatever these squirmy sleepers are doing.  And then a fringe benefit was that Anders' XL Froggy Quilt was just the right size for the XL Twin dorm bed at Davidson where he stayed for the Duke TiP Summer Center program this June.

The original Moda design calls for blocks that are all multiples of 6": 6", 12", 18", 24", 30", and 36".  By resizing the blocks to multiples of 5" instead, I was able to use the same blocks in the same layout, but the width of the finished quilt is reduced to 70" instead of 84".  Perfect for my twin bed.  Of course, shrinking all the blocks reduced the length of the quilt as well, so I added 8" striped borders to the top and bottom of the quilt to get the 96" length that I wanted.  Since I was changing the colors and the block sizes, I decided to redraft the entire quilt in my EQ7 software.  Added bonus: I had to learn how to do a "Custom Set Layout" in order to do this.  Quite a few of the blocks in this quilt were already in the EQ7 block library or in the supplemental Block Base library.  For others, I was able to find a similar block and edit it to look like the one in the Moda quilt (more good software skills practice).  However, as I was getting near the end of the quilt, recoloring it with Kona Solids as I went along, I was starting to get kind of a Scandinavian/Germanic folk art vibe that I liked, so I deliberately swapped out two of the larger blocks for others that better supported that concept.

My EQ7 XL Twin Version of Modern Building Blocks, 70" x 96"

It did take me quite awhile to resize, recreate and recolor this quilt in EQ7, but it was time that was well spent.  For one thing, I had to get the colors the way I wanted them before I bought or cut any fabric, because a quilt like this is difficult to rearrange once the blocks are made if you discover there's too much black in one area or too much blue somewhere else.  The blocks fit together almost like a jigsaw puzzle.  Another reason that I went to all this trouble in EQ7 is that it is very likely that, by changing my blocks from multiples of 6" to multiples of 5", I might find that the patches I need to cut for my blocks are no longer "Ruler Friendly" for rotary cutting.  Now that I've created the project in EQ7, I can easily print any or all of the blocks as templates or as foundation paper piecing patterns.  I can also continue to play around with recoloring (still not 100% sure about that salmon pink color) and/or swapping out blocks, saving each version of the quilt so I can compare all of them, all before spending a dime on fabric.  EQ7 also generates yardage requirements automatically, which is a VERY handy feature.  I am SO glad my husband and kids bought me this software -- one of the best gifts ever!

I'm linking up with:

Let’s Bee Social at http://sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/

WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times www.patchworktimes.com

Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/

...And then, I'm going to get some work done, and THEN, I swear I'm going to cut out that SKIRT!