This Lori Holt pattern, along with the main one shown on the front of the book, Prairie Home, are the two that made me really want to get the book when I first saw it introduced.

And so now I’ve made this top and it is a finished quilt, I really do like it.

I still do not care for the way Lori has us make those half square triangles - in fact, I find it really hard and actually much prefer to just make them by making a bigger square and sewing in half along each side of the line and then trimming down. She has you make them all with a “stitch and flip” method or a “snowball” method, depending on who you listen to.

I used some Lori Holt prints in the long john patterns, but I didn’t have enough reds that I wanted to use for it, so I just went to my reds section of my stash and pulled several I thought would be great in addition to the 3 or 4 reds from the Lori Holt fabrics I have.

I also did not use a Lori Holt background on this as I had something else I could use.

I mean, obviously I could use 3-4 yards or more of the background, but I had something else to use and save my precious LH background for a different project. I call it precious because while I’m here in Poland, I don’t really have access to more of it.

Because the blocks are so large, this goes together rather quickly for the amount of detail in each block.

I did make one of the long johns at a time until I made sure I got the hang of it, and then I went and cut out several at once.

I’m not the kind of person who will normally cut out all at the same time even when the pattern tells you to, because this kind of cutting is tedious and I find myself needing to break it up with the piecing, or sewing part. I find that I stay engaged and work harder on such a project this way.

I don’t think any of these are actually Lori Holt fabrics, but they look nice in the quilt and fit with the theme.

Once again, these were rather large blocks and as such, they covered a lot of ground quickly.

That simply means it didn’t take terribly long to make all the blocks for the center of the quilt. Without a doubt the blocks around the outside took more time than the long john blocks.

I found them especially tedious because I wasn’t enjoying the method of making them but was determined to do them the way she asked us to to see if I could learn to do them more accurately that way. However, sadly, I did not. At least not yet. Maybe next time.

It was also tedious because I had thoroughly enjoyed making the long john blocks, which is the reason I was making the quilt. The outer blocks felt like “filler” blocks or ones to just help round out the quilt, but not ones I was in love with.

Anyway, I digress.

The quilt is in Prairie Home book.

With this finish, my Lori Holt series now looks like this: