I Spy Quilt, Part 1 -The quilt begins!

I am so grateful for some cyber friends that sent me some pieces to use for the I Spy quilt I am making for my grand children.  Pauline, Linda, Pam and Rachel, Kori, Suzette and Donella, Sherri and Cecile, Diane, Wendy and Laura -  thank you  SO much your your help!  I am so amazed at the prints they sent me! I know there's alot of fabric I have never seen, but these are beyond what I  thought I could see! They are just perfect, unique images  for an I Spy quilt. While looking through the pieces, I kept telling myself "its for the kids! It's for the kids! You can't have it!" I am so excited to start working on the quilt again. 

This is the way I am making the blocks. 3x3" I Spy center square with 1" sashings all around. I call them sashings, others may call them "borders". Either way, I chose this way of construction to set off the images better. I have seen many with the image pieces just all sewn together and no organization and to me they just look messy, busy and cluttered. I want the kids to do a little searching for the items, but I don't want them exhausted after doing so! The white borders/sashings just work well for this reason.

 

So far I have 12 blocks per row which makes the rows 60" long(wide) which is what I want, so
I need to make 12 rows...and here is only 4!  I will be making more blocks and rows this week. I want the finished quilt to be 50"x50" plus border and binding, so I can either take off one block from these 4 rows and make only 11 blocks per row or just make the quilt 60x60, plus border and binding.
Is there such thing as a quilt being TO BIG? 
With 3 little girls crawling around on it...maybe not! I  have the option of  adding a 1" colored sash in between the white sashes when assembling the quilt to maybe break up the white sashing a bit..maybe not every row with a colored strip, but such one every couple of rows for aesthetic effect! I'll be testing that idea this week also. An Idea I got from from talking to a cyber friend... I was wondering how to make it easier for the "caller" to call ALL the items to spy..without being down there to and to know what is there to call....Hulamoon suggested a little notebook, listing all the squares. That way the "caller" could look at the book, choose an item and call it...with nearly 100 items to choose from, searching for them in the quilt can be rather cumbersome for the caller, but with the book...I'll just put a pocket on the back of the quilt to hold the book and BINGO! Works like a charm!

Here it is so far.....

Thank you so much  Pauline, Linda, Pam and Rachel, Kori, Suzette and Donella, Sherri and Cecile,Diane, Wendy and Laura-for helping me out. I SO appreciate it and enjoy our "cyber friendship"! The kids are going to love it and I even think that the 12 yo grand son might even have a bit of a interest to play with us! I will post progress as it happens...so..... stay tuned!

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Thanks for stopping by and...keep on sewing those memories!