Modern Mini Blanket Ready for Quilting

In the first step of the Modern Quilt Along with the Free Motion Quilting Project, I cut out some flannel squares to make a mini blanket. This week, I turned those into wonky square blocks by adding some borders and trimming them down at random angles.

The technique involves cutting away a fair bit of fabric, which is not something that I normally do. I'm a stickler for precise cutting in order to get the most out of every single inch of fabric. I felt a little bit bad for wasting some, but the blocks did turn out to be adorable.

Having a helper in my sewing room made those blocks rather difficult to photograph however... this kept happening:

This will be a donation blanket for rescued cats, so it's a good thing Sigmund is there to test it out at every step. I sewed the blocks together pretty randomly in the order that I was able to get them out from under the cat, then added some extra navy blue until I got to the size I wanted.

I really love how this turned out! This technique would make a really interesting bed quilt and I may revisit it on a larger scale later on. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing what my fellow quilters have done with it.

The second part of this week's exercise was to put the blanket together and divide it into sections with some large scale lines. Being used to quilting one small area at a time, I found the fast movement of this big design a little bit more challenging. There are definitely some wobbly spots, but I don't expect them to show much once the empty spaces are filled.

There was one block left from the front of the blanket, which I used to give the back a little bit more interest. The rest is solid navy blue, to allow the stitching to show up clearly. From the back, the overall design looks like this so far: