Split Rail quilts

Last week on a whim I decided to whip up a couple more quilts to donate to Project Linus.  I had a lot of orange-themed fabric leftover from the chevron quilt I made earlier this year and since I'm not going to make one of my annual goals to donate a knitted and quilted blanket to Project Linus, I figured donating three quilted blankets will make up for my lack of knitting progress.  I did some sketches and calculations in the parking lot of a Costco Tire and then put the tops together in about a day.  I'm really pleased with how the quilts came out, especially the purple one.

The key to making quilts like this is to sew long strips of fabric together and then measure and cut and sew the sets together.   Both quilts have the same strips/squares, I just made one set of each in reverse fabric order and then put the more orange-y ones in one quilt and the more purple-y ones in the other. 

I took a big step while quilting and did more than just following the straight seems - I also did some diagonal quilting!  Amazing, huh? ;-)

As I was working on these quilts, I kept thinking "These are so ugly!" but I kind of think it all worked out.  One of my favorite squares:

The back fabric of the orange one actually has a white-on-white batik-y pattern that's a little hard to see in these pictures.  I appliqued some squares because it just felt too plain.  

The back fabric of the purple quilt is a faux-velvet cotton that I think was part of my grandmother's stash.  It is super super cozy!  I used a lot of scrap batting so this quilt is a lot thicker than the orange one.  

It's hard to believe that just two years ago I made my first quilt (ever) for Project Linus.  There was some stress and some angst and it took me several months to make the whole thing.  I've come so far in my sewing skills since and I am super proud of what I've learned.  I'm already plotting my next quilts and plan to work on experimenting with some squares this fall . . .