Stormy Snail

When my nephew announced his engagement, I contacted the bride to see whether she’d welcome a quilt, and if so, what would she like. She told me that blue and white would be great, especially a dark blue, since all of her favorite teams (Penn St, Duke, others) had that color combination. I searched around a bit and showed her some pictures from the Internet, and she picked out this one. I decided to use foundation/paper piecing because I felt it needed to be precise to make it work. I noodled around with graph paper, trying to figure out the design. A friend helped me by using EQ7 to create pdfs of the Storm at Sea sashing. Meanwhile, I used that sizing to create the Snail’s trail squares. I started with the darkest blue in the center, and worked my way out to the lighter colors. Once I finished all my squares (40 of them), I started on the sashing, and found I’d have to make some alterations to the color planning, since I was running out of the lightest blue fabric, and there was no more to be had. I did manage (by luck) to make enough sashing that was light/medium to allow the pattern to flow well. I made a production line of it, piecing all the squares, then the sashing pieces and mini squares. Then I trimmed them all to the proper size, and started putting them together in strips. I did get the main part of the quilt together before the wedding. I knew I needed to put a border on it, but only found the perfect batik at the end of July. I put an inch wide border of the darkest blue, followed by an inch of the white before putting on a 5 inch border of the patterned batik. My favorite long armer had it quilted in a week, and I was able to put the binding on it while watching the Summer Olympics.