Go, Chicago!

Yes...another quilt for Mari's family!

This one is for Henry, who is the brother of Sebastian (see Sebastian's Ark).

This time the request was for a sports-themed quilt, specifically one with the Chicago teams. So I hunted around on-line and found that Jo-Anns had fabrics featuring the Cubs, Sox, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks. I also found a cute navy-blue sports-equipment pattern for the back.

I then created a design which consisted of 9 blocks, 3 x 3. Five of the blocks were just 9" x 9" squares, one for each team. The other 4 blocks were log cabins, made up of a fussy-cut center square from a team, and "logs" of the other teams surrounding it.  Then, there was a border of 3" x 3" squares of the 5 teams.

First, I cut out the 5 big squares, then I cut the 3x3's for the border. Next, I made the first log cabin block. Pin it to the wall....take a good look....UGH! It was horrible!  The colors of the various teams (white and black Sox, blue and red Cubs, black and orange Bears, black and red Hawks, red and white Bulls) were so strong and so incompatible, that the whole thing was a disaster.

OK....maybe if I put some sashing in between the blocks it would break up the in-your-face colors and soften it a bit. But what color to use that I didn't already have? Either green or yellow!  I found a nice yellow with tiny white dots in my stash. Cut a few strips....pinned them up.....no improvement.

Time to reassess. I sought counsel from a good quilting buddy and also from my live-in advisor. The end result is that I went back to square one.  Since I needed to use the team fabrics, and their colors are so robust, it was obvious that a different approach was required.  So I did a complete 180!  I decided to put horizontal strips of the fabrics on the back, and integrate the sports-equipment fabric on the front!  I found the same fabric in a lighter shade, and reused the pattern from "Play Time", but stuck with the 3x3 arrangement.  I needed a third fabric for the border and sashing, and found the perfect multi-colored dots at Quilter's Heaven. 

All ready to start over and.....wait!  It suddenly dawned on me that there is a sixth pro Chicago team: The Fire (yes....soccer!). Since I had to go back to JoAnn's to get more fabs from the original teams (not enough left over to do what I wanted), it was no extra effort to get the Fire fabric (which they of course had!). I adjusted the dimensions of the front a little bit to allow for the 6th fabric on the back, and it worked perfectly! I was able to get a full repeat (or more) of each team. And by arranging it this way, the colors actually balance and work! I think the front came out very nice too. Add the "Henry" monogram and, finally, here it is!