I Spy Pink & Gray Snowflakes

Last year about this time, I saw a Quilt Along for a Snowflake Quilt.  The pattern was by Fresh Lemons and the Quilt Along was hosted by Bernina.  I liked the pattern, but knew there was NO WAY that the three week timeline would work for me

I had just hosed a swap of 2 1/2" strips of I Spy fabrics.  I knew I wanted to make a pink & gray quilt, and this pattern was 2 1/2" strip friendly, though it wasn't advertised that way.  So I cut up my pieces and set it out as a leader & ender project.  The background is Kona Snow.  Appropriate for a quilt of snowflakes!

Once I had all the blocks made, I decided I wasn't crazy about the original layout, so I played around and ended up with this instead.  My layout meant I needed an equal number of pink and gray blocks, so I had to make a few extra gray blocks.

In addition to some straight line quilting, I decided to use a decorative stitch in bright pink to frame each of the big blocks.  I'm happy with how this looks.

Usually I care that the orientation of my I Spy fabrics are as "correct" as possible.  This block got me over that!  There was no way to get everything to face the same way, so I didn't even try.

I generally back my Project Linus quilts with fleece, but someone had donated a large piece of minky and it fit the size of this quilt nicely.  I love the feel of the minky, but working with it was more challenging than my normal fleece.  First of all, it sheds when cut.  And when hand-sewing the binding, I had a hard time catching the binding and the minky but not the front of the quilt. So if I use any again, I will machine sew the binding.

This was on my list of Q3 goals for the globally hosted finish along (goal #13).