“Tropical Checkerboards” - a leftovers quilt top

When I was in Florida, helping Rachael in February and March, I saw that we were working with a lot of tropical colored fabrics.

Naturally I liked them. Ok, ok. I just like fabric. If they had been mountain themed or animals, or fish, or whatever, I’d have liked them.

But as I worked with them, there were times that there were small pieces that were too small to be used for what we were doing (making fat quarters, for instance). I kept those pieces and eventually trimmed them up into 2.5” strips.

I decided to go ahead and make this simple Checkerboard top. It is made from a few different white on white fabrics combined with these various tropical colored leftovers. It was reminiscent of this quilt I made shown to the right.

I had thought it would be small at first.

But it kept getting bigger and bigger. :) I guess I have that problem no matter where I am. It ended up being about 80”x100”, I think (78”x94”). As it was, I called it quits - as I did have more strips so I could have made it larger! It was almost funny - as I was originally aiming for about a 55”x75” quilt. I guess I failed at that.

Here it is.

This is on my mom’s carpeted floor. There was almost not enough space anywhere to take this photo!

When I made this top, all I did was strip piece those 2.5” strips - white/tropical/white/tropical. I made up a bunch of those and then mixed and matched those 4 pieces of 2.5” squares.

This made 8.5” blocks.

I then put them together to make this top. This quilt is made up of 80 of those 16 patch blocks.

At first I wanted to make that border like I made in the one shown above - but decided not to try since my selection of fabrics were all pretty much all medium and dark values - no lights…so it would have been too difficult since I didn’t have a lot of fabrics to work with (as scraps!) - since that was the point of this top.

So, instead I opted to find a nice, gloriously beautiful and WILD fabric for the border.

I just wanted to show people that even a simple checkerboard quilt is still pretty. Things don’t always have to be so complicated! I used 3 or 4 different white on white fabrics as the white.

I left the top in Florida to be quilted. When I see it after it is finished, I’ll be sure to share it with you. The long-armers were incredibly busy and we told them there was no hurry so it maybe May or June before I see it. We’ll see. It certainly isn’t high priority.

But…it’s just a reminder - it’s okay to make simple. Perfectly fine.

Oh wait - here’s probably the first simple checkerboard I made - draped over the sofa at the church building.

Have a great day wherever you are reading!

Thanks for coming along with me.

Becky Petersen6 Comments