I laughed last week when my sis suggested I make some quilts using bigger pieces so they don’t all look the same. At the time I had a few tops in the works with some rather large blocks - even if some of the individual squares in the blocks weren’t all that large.

But here’s a quilt made from quite large blocks!

I was playing around with the alternate drop block layout. I’ve actually used it very little and it provides such interesting possibilities, I want to try to use it more. This is what I’m talking about when I say that.

It means that instead of each row and column lining up exactly, the columns are the same length but the first block on the second row is dropped halfway. It actually has the potential to create some interesting looks.

These blocks are enormous - 22” in fact.

I had started this one weeks ago now but kind of lost interest. I’m just not naturally as interested in this type of quilt, but am sort of forcing myself just to change things up for myself. I really prefer more piecing and more detail in the quilts I make.

I decided to make this one definitely more interesting by using pattern fabrics in the light part of the stars and such. I left the center checkerboard a simple color/white/color/white layout.

I vacillated about the border. I wanted to use a lot of those cut off pieces I created while making this quilt in the border. However, as much as I tried, I did not like the look I was getting. I felt like it fought with the center and I didn’t want to do that.

So, I went with a simple border. I found a big bag of uncut up scraps from some leftover charity quilting a while ago now. I dug around in it and found these pieces that were already cut and made them into the border. The orange and pink were in pretty short pieces but I just sewed them together. The blue and red were already long enough so no piecing needed!

The good thing about this one is that I was able to pull from my scraps to be cut up for the brights - and the checkerboards. The black was new and from my stash (it’s actually the end - need to buy more) and the borders were also pulled from the “ready to be dealt with scraps that I pull from to make into strips”. So that’s a plus.

The big blocks meant that putting it together was a snap. It really was. I’m used to it taking quite a while to put an 8x10 or 7x8 layout together. This was quick. And it is a good thing as I really wasn’t interested in it. I like it better looking at it as a finished top than I thought I would.

So this is number 12 in my series of quilts at least starting with my 2.5” strips bags.

Don’t worry - I won’t stay in this checkerboard phase too long - but they are super easy to make and sometimes when you want to just sew but with nothing in mind, a checkerboard block is easy to do. And there is actually a lot you can do with them. A different day I can show you all the quilts I’ve made with checkerboard blocks that I can find. Pat Sloan kind of got me going on those years ago now. This may have been my first. She had wanted us to make a quilt from that checkerboard block. This was what I came up with.

As an interesting note, if I were doing this again, with my changes in taste and what I want to do, I might do something like this instead. I was using all upcycleds though, for these challenges (back in 2015 I think). I’m not really a fan of that dark sashing butting up next to those blocks. The white space shown below gives your eyes the break they need to enjoy each block.

ANYWAY, I digress…

The whole series to date is as shown below.

You can tell by this that I’m already 5 behind on quilting these - plus all those green ones from my UP greens series! Oh my!