Blue on Blue Birthday Quilt

UPDATE! May 17th!
Hurray it is completed!

The blue on blue D4P birthday quilt I was making for my daughter Jen is now done! Hurray! I took many breaks from this blue beauty this last month to also work on a hexagon hand pieced quilt UFO. My mom has been visiting us here in Minnesota for three weeks and one of those weeks we took her out to see our daughter Jen on the east coast. The hexie was a more portable project for our 8 day vacation to Virginia Beach. More on that in my next post. So, even though I have been quilting like crazy person in my spare time, I have not had much spare time! LOL  We did have a great time in Virginia Beach!

But I came home from vacation, got busy finishing the last few feet of quilting free motion leaves on this lovely blue disappearing four patch and then bound it. Here are some final pics!
DONE!!!
(And now that I am done free motion quilting the leafy motifs on this beauty, I am linking it up to Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project too! Thanks for all the tutorials and inspiration, Leah!)  

--------------------Below was Posted on April 8th-----------------------

This is my progress this last week or two on a wonderful blue quilt I am making for my daughter. All blue stash fabrics. Not a speck of new-buy for it! I am very proud of that. :D

First I selected all the cream, white and blue on light for the lighter parts of the blocks and cut them into 5 inch squares. See left side of this photo below.  Then I dug out and cut 5 inch squares of all the deep medium to dark blues which are shown in the right side of the first photo. We are making a disappearing four patch quilt. That means one whole day cutting....Whew!  320 five inch blocks.

This above photo shows the cotton french country toile fabric print of a young couple sitting beside a stream. I got 4 yards of it at our local Savers thrift for $2.99 at Christmas time and my daughter immediately wanted it. At the time I said NOPE! I thought I was going to make something with it for me....But when she asked again to have it in this toile included in the quilt for her birthday. my heart melted and I gave in. :D Love you Jenny!  This toile fabric has a 9 inch repeat so I decided not to cut it up. Instead I am keeping it whole to show off the design. I am using it for the backing.

Time to sew!  Making one light and one dark in each pair. I chain pieced 160 pairs. Put two pairs together to make a four patch. Then make two cuts vertically and two cuts horizontally. I cut mine 1.25 from center seams on both sides of the seam.

Flip over only the resulting = bars that look like equal signs. Leave the center mini four patch and the large square corners alone.

Sew them back together in the new formation. I made 80 of these disappearing four patch blocks. Then I sewed four of those together to make 20 giant blocks. These 20 blocks make it easier to work with the elements and lay them out. Once you get a layout that you like (My blue and my white fabrics were scrappy and from existing stash in varying amounts, so I tried to distribute the blocks and fabrics across the quilt nicely.)

Note how the darker "light" fabrics almost make ghost blocks here and there around the quilt because they are between the lightest and the darkest in color value. I like that.

I added a 2.5 inch mini dot medium blue inner border and a 3 inch navy blue mini dot border on the outside with border strips left over from this Row by Row quilt finished a few weeks ago. Honestly, before that, they are likely left over from the 1990's I think! LOL But they are perfect for this quilt as borders. And I know Jen likes them too.

With borders I think it is 72x86. Now to get that toile backing on, sandwich batting in there, and get it quilted!