"I Spy With my Little Eye"... a Finished I Spy quilt!!! YEA!!!!

Well, it is finally finished! My much anticipated  "I Spy" quilt for my grand kids! It has been a long road...mostly just trying to figure it out, but with the help of some wonderful cyber friends who helped me collect some of the most amazing and awesome fabric images to use to "spy"...I got it finished!

Here's how it started...... I Spy, Part 1    and      I Spy, Part 2 

And now it is FINISHED!!!! 

I wanted the images to be (finished) 3x3 squares - 169 of them! I sashed the squares with white 1 inch sashings because I wanted the sashing to separate the squares so it didn't look cluttered and messy.

 I added 2, 2" borders and a final binding.        It measures 70x70"

The back is a colorful flower bed sheet sheet. I did a little notebook with all the items to "spy" and made a pocket out of the label on the back for the little book to go in. Now, one can have the book and choose from any page, and item for the others to "spy".

The creation of the quilt wasn't all fun tho! I enjoyed so much collecting the pieces and even sewing the sashes on was quick and easy and even fun. I was so looking forward to putting it all together!  I was disappointed tho, that in spite of how hard I tried to make sure everything was even and straight, when I went to sew the sashed rows together, seams didn't match. I don't know what I did wrong. But oh, well, because it was so large and so many squares, it wouldn't be that noticable. Or so I thought hoped!

When I went to do the top stitching,  I decided to just sew around each square...about scant 1/4" on each side of each seam. That way the square was accentuated and no stitching was done over the image. But because the seams didn't match when I sewed the sashes together, the seams used as a guide were then crooked. Now it was noticable!!! Nothing I could do do about it, so I just did the best I could at making the lines straight and just finished it off. I kept telling myself...."the kids won't notice! The kids won't notice! They will be having so much fun...they won't notice!"

 Here are a few of the squares..


"I spy with my little eye......a red car, a dolphin, a cheerleader, bouquet of daisies

 "I Spy with my little eye....
some pencils, a pink butterfly, hot dogs on the grill and a yellow teddy bear with a green sweater

I Spy with my little eye....Red lips, little cars, Raggedy Ann and Andy, a unicorn

 

" I Spy with my little eye...
a sewing machine, a watch, a lobster, a camera"














 
And in the end, that is all that matters anyway..that the kids have fun with the I Spy quilt, made for them by their loving Grandmother,  Nanny (that's me!) We will make some great memories! I wonder what they will say when they have it to give to their kids and tell  about when their grandma made it and gave it to them!!

I have some extra "I spy" pieces, I am comtemplating creating a quilt/board game similar to CandyLand. I was raised on board games and putting the game on a quilt just makes it all better. I made a hopscotch quilt (will blog about that soon!) and the girls loved it..none could hop in the square right, which just means they need practice on balance and coordination...and that is one thing Hopscotch offers...practice on balance and coordination!

P.S. When I took it over to the kids..they didn't notice!

Want to read more at Fabric and Memories? CLICK HERE This post linked to the Linky Party for the day. Click on the "Here's Where I Party" tab at the top of my page and join us! Lots and lots of amazing talents on "display" 

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

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