Drum Roll Please, the Finished NC State Quilt

A little over three years ago, the Husbatron asked me to marry him Shortly thereafter, he casually dropped hints that he might like a quilt that incorporated his love for NC State. I kind of ignored him/filed away that idea for future reference, since I was busy planning and executing quilts for my bridesmaids.

Fast forward to a few years later. Since the traditional gift for the second wedding anniversary is COTTON, I decided our 2nd anniversary would be an ideal time to crank out his NCSU quilt. So we started talking about what exactly he had in mind. Since he comes from a design background, I knew he'd definitely have ideas about what the finished product should look like. His ultimate wish was for a quilt that formed a mosaic of the NC State logo. He was even kind enough to brave a trip to the local quilt shop with me and pick out a few reds that represent that perfect shade of NCSU red. I also grabbed a few red scraps from my stash, including a print that Mom used for one of my childhood dresses.

 

To make the pattern, I grabbed a copy of the NC State logo from Google Images, blew it up until it filled out an 8x11 sheet of paper nicely, put a sheet of graph paper over top of it, and loosely traced the logo onto the graph paper. If you're handy with photo-editing software, you could also pixellate a low-resolution image like whoa to get a grid of the image. But what can I say? I like to kick it old skool.

Each square on the graph paper represents a 2.5" (2" finished) square. Luckily, I was able to group the squares into a series of 9-patches to make for easy construction. Instead of piecing together long chains of 2.5" squares, I was able to piece together rows of 6.5" (6" finished) 9-patch blocks. If you decide to embark on a mosaic project, I highly recommend looking for a way to turn the pattern into a series of 4-patch or 9-patch blocks. I think it will save you from wanting to poke out your eye later.

Moving on, the background is Kona Ash, the white is Kona White, the black prints came from my stash, and like I mentioned earlier, the reds are a mix of prints from Wish Upon a Quilt and my stash.

After about 4-5 weeks of quilting and a furious session of machine binding that turned out better than I anticipated, I'm happy to say that the Husbatron sits under this quilt while he does a little bit of armchair quarterbacking for his team every weekend.

 

Vital Stats:
Started: August 2011
Finished: November 2011
Machine pieced, machine quilted, it's even machine-BOUND