Plan C finished! Renamed Plan Copenhagen

Plan Copenhagen
71.5 x 71.5 inches

Finished June 2011

I started this quilt in July 2010. The fabric had been a Christmas Gift from Santa in my stocking, but it took a few months until I figured out what I wanted to make with it. This quilt is made from a pattern in the Schnibbles book by Carrie Nelson. Love that book! The pattern went together fairly quickly. I loved the way the stars started to pop out, even before the white was added.

Here you can see the quilt beginning to come together -- this is only one or two days worth of sewing.

After piecing together the top, I took a break for a few weeks. That always seems to happen to me -- borders must get me down! But, in mid-August, I finally pieced together the piano key border and the top was finished.

It was so large, my living room floor wasn't quite big enough to get a clear picture. The quilt sat in my storage room for months! I couldn't figure out how I wanted to quilt it, so I just left it alone. Then, I had grand ideas that I would finish all my quilts that are just sitting waiting to be quilted while I recovered from foot surgery. That didn't happen! They're still downstairs waiting to be quilted.

But, in May my husband was asked to go to Denmark to take a class. A wonderful family offered up their home as a place for my husband and his colleagues to stay for a month while they took their class. I am amazed at their generosity! This quilt came to mind -- to me it just says 'Denmark'. That's also why I changed it's name to Plan Copenhagen -- just seemed to fit. :)

So, I finally had a reason to push myself to finish it. I quilted it in the first two weeks of June and it was ready to fly to Copenhagen.

I stippled it with really tiny flowers and leaves. I have to admit, the quilting was not exactly as I like it. I did it really tight together, which makes it difficult to see the design. Oh well. Live and learn.

The quilt flew in my suitcase to Denmark and now resides in this adorable little house outside of Copenhagen:

This is a picture of the summer guest house out back. We actually stayed in the basement of the big house, but the guest house just looks so Danish I had to include it here. :)

Thanks Annie & Jens -- we had an absolutely lovely time! We loved every minute in your home and in your country. Thank you for being so kind to share it with us. Hopefully this quilt will help you to remember over time how much we truly loved it! Thanks!

Christmas projects finished!

All the Christmas gifts are in the mail. This was my final gift project. After it has been delivered, I'll show the entire quilt. I'm pretty jazzed about this one -- I made up the pattern and finished it all in about 6 weeks. Compared to some people, that's a quilter's lifetime. For me, that's pretty speedy!

Now I'm off to make my kids Christmas pajamas! Yahoo! It's almost here!

Fantastic Voyage Step #4

Step #4 -- It's starting to come together! Stack your mini-blocks all together. Turn the stack so that you have it with piece C on the bottom. Place another piece C (2.5 X 4.5) next to the piece you have already sewn. It should look like the block in the picture above. Sew with right sides together. Duplicate for all 128 blocks.

Iron and open.

I'm realizing that I may not have enough pictures for visualization. If someone actually reading this would like more detailed pictures, let me know.

Fantastic Voyage Step #3

Step #3 is also fairly easy. There's only one trick -- sew everything on the same side. Lay out your pieces from step #2. Next to them, place your stack of Piece C fabric. You're going to sew Piece C to the long side of your two pieces with the right sides together. It will make three parallel seams.

If you don't sew all the pieces on the same side, the next step in the quilt will not work properly. So use caution!

Iron open and starch. When finished, you should have 128 building blocks for your quilt that have three strips of fabric in each.

Fantastic Voyage Step #2

Step #2 is easy and fun. All you do is take two Piece A strips -- these are 1.5 x 4.5. Sew them together down the long side. I used the chain piecing method(where you don't cut the thread between each set of strips. That way it only took me about one hour to finish this step.

When you are finished, iron and starch as desired. I like stacking in groups of 10 so that I can be sure all 128 building blocks are there.