Project Quilting 4 Progress

The theme for this week (round 4) of "Project Quilting" is "Barn Quilt".  These are the colorful painted quilt blocks that you see decorating barns mostly in the Midwest.  Growing up in the deep South, and living most of my adult life in the West, I don't have a whole lot of experience with these, but did see a few when we lived in Michigan.  I Google'd many images and got an idea of what they are.  The ones I saw are very "traditional", and primarily use solid (paint) colors.  They're almost always square.

There are many traditional quilt blocks that I love, and many that mean something to me for various reasons (the "Louisiana" quilt block, "Oregon Trail", "Greek Cross").  Making a simple quilt block just didn't really seem "creative", so I looked at it from another angle.  I tried to envision what we'd have on a barn, if we owned one, and almost immediately a firefly came to mind.  We've had "firefly" in some form or another in our family email address since our very first AOL dial-up account, back in the 90's.  I started searching for "firefly quilt blocks", and came up with nothing really, so I decided to make my own.

Using a traditional quilt grid, I played around until I came up with something that I liked.  I also like another version, which I'll maybe make someday.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find a big variety of solid colors in local shops, and had to "settle" on some solids from a nearby Jo-Anns fabric store.  I really wanted a dark red/orange head, and a lime-yellow/green tail.  I just finished sewing it up, and hope to get it quilted today or tomorrow.  I decided to enlarge it to a 24" x 24" block too.  I'd love to order some solids on-line and redo the block, and even found some glow-in-the-dark fabric paint that I may try out soon, but it requires a significant dry time, and I just got it, so I don't think I'll have time to use it... we'll see...

I'm already thinking about all of the fun variations I could do with this block... lady bug, bee, you name it.  I think it'd make a really fun quilt!!

Better get busy quilting!!  I can't wait to see what the other quilters come up with this week!