Off to Texas with frogs in tow before life gets wacky again! Posted by Virginia "Ginnie" Leiner on February 20, 2019 at 3:21pm View Blog

This is my granddaughter, Sylvia. She is beautiful and wacky and crazy and kind. One of a kind. I love her with all my heart and when it was time to make her a baby quilt, life got in the way and I never got to it while she was a baby (she is almost four). Things were further delayed by the fact that her momma, my daughter Becky, wanted to cross stitch something for the quilt and she discovered life with a baby meant less time to cross stitch and less time to do alot of other things! So I gathered the fabric and drew the plans for Sylvia's baby quilt and waited for the cross stitch border to make it happen. In the meantime, I had a few knee surgeries and made a few other quilts. Finally, Becky and I faced the reality that a four sided cross stitched border was going to take forever so we compromised with one strip and instead of a baby quilt, since Sylvia had recently moved into her "big girl bed," we decided on a larger quilt. Here it is:

I had wanted to use the yoga frogs from the beginning. I found the pattern in a quilt magazine with no name attributed to it. It is actually a two block quilt but you only make nine of one block, the ones with the frogs in the center:

and add the lattice work between the blocks and voila! a star block appears, set on point, with the bright swirl squares as their corners:

I found the heart block for the border in another quilt magazine (in an advertisement for a longarm, I wish!) and they really worked well with the center. I love checkerboard in black and white so that was the finishing touch!

My ah-ha moment or big realization that occurred when making this quilt was about the process. You know how you make a plan, draw it out on paper and think you know exactly where you are going and where it will end up? No so this time around. The nine frog blocks were a bit challenging to match up with the lattice to make that illusion of things fading in and out of prominence and I had to add many narrow borders (which I love by the way) to make the hearts and checkerboard fit. I found out the sometimes making a quilt is just one new decision after another as you go along. When I met a challenge on this quilt, I found it was best not to rush the solution, to let it evolve with as much time as it took, to let my mind just muse about various possible solutions before implementing one. I did more actual quilting on this beast than normal as well. I first did stitch in the ditch on every seam and for about a day, I thought that was going to be it. In talking to Becky, who is also a quilter (the apple didn't fall far from the tree), I told her last Friday, "Well, I am either done quilting in an hour here or this weekend is going to be non-stop more quilting." Of course I chose the later. The checkerboard is cross hatch quilted. The body of the quilt is double quilted 1/4 inch from each seam. I am rather proud of myself! So off to Texas with the quilt in my carry on luggage. It measures 77-1/2 x 81 inches and fits very nicely in a small rolly bag. We will make a fabric photo for the back when I am down there. My printer did a crap job on the photos I tried to do. Then it is done. Sylvia will get her "baby" quilt FINALLY, this gramma will get four fun days with Sylvia and her folks, and we can all move on to the next big thing which, for me, is....another knee surgery on March 15th! Yep, the left knee failed again so I am getting a new one. Oh boy. But, being a perennial Pollyanna, I am already planning what I can get done quilt-wise over the six week recuperation period. Stay tuned for details. Happy quilting! Ginnie