Quilt 89: Moda's "Summer Breeze IV" Charm Squares - DONE!

A little over a month ago, I was in my favorite quilt shop looking for backing fabric.  As I always do, I cruised by the charm square table to have a look at what was on offer.  I found this set by Moda Fabrics:

(doubleclick any picture on this page to see a larger image)

I fell in love with this set instantly.  The blue, white, and yellow squares are so fresh and clean looking!  I bought 2 packs of these, as I planned to use my favorite simple squares design.

I've done several charm square quilts like this one - just joining the squares together and slapping on a border.  It's a fun (and fast) project to do.  With this one, I wanted yellow and blue for the border, with a half-inch wide strip of green to frame the squares.  But I wasn't sure how to place the blue and yellow borders.

This is one of those times when I'm especially pleased with my Quilt Wizard computer software.  I used the tool to mock up a design for the quilt, and then auditioned the borders:

First with the yellow between the blue borders:

Then with the blue between the yellow:

I liked the second arrangement the best.

Next I spread out the squares, arranging them on the bed, and working to have the different lights and darks as evenly distributed as possible:

Now that I've got an arrangement I'm happy with, I mark the columns of squares to make sure I don't get confused about which columns go next to each other.  I do this with pins.  In the rightmost column, I've put one pin in the bottom square - so I'll remember that's column 1.  In the next one, 2 pins, and so on:

Now I pin the squares in each column together.  What you see below is column 6 pinned together.

Once the columns are marked and pinned together, I stitch the columns together.  Then I press the completed columns so that the odd numbered columns are pressed down and the even columns are pressed up (as you see below).  Doing this prevents a big lump at the corners when the columns are joined together.

And here it is - the center of the top all stitched together and ready for the borders!

The charm square packs had 42 squares, so I had these 4 squares left over.  I always seem to have a few squares left over from each project when I've used charm squares.  I'm hanging onto them - eventually I'll have enough leftovers for a quilt!

The borders took no time at all to put on - and the quilting?  That was fast, too, because I opted for free-motion loop-d-loops.  It only took about 3 hours to finish the quilting

54" x 62" - quilted on the longarm (free-motion loop-d-loops) - bamboo batting

Here's a closeup of the stitches (below) and you can see the binding and backing fabric.

I'd originally planned on backing this with solid yellow homespun, but then I saw the blue-and-yellow pansy fabric and oh, it's just perfect for this quilt.  I'm quite proud of this backing - there's a seam there (the backing fabric is 44" wide, so I needed to stitch 2 lengths together) - but you really can't see it, can you?

This quilt, like the one I posted about last week, is going to a Cystic Fybrosis fundraiser which I believe is happening this coming weekend.