Black and White Kinship Quilt

Only 41 days to go until one of my favorite quilt-alongs of the year starts: 100 Days 100 Blocks.  Ange has a brand-new pattern this year and I can't wait to dive in and make it.  This will be my ninth time participating in this quilt-along!  But first, I need to share quilt number eight: the Black and White Kinship Quilt!

This quilt started, oddly enough, with the backing fabric.  I had purchased a wideback online for another project (I don't even remember which one anymore) and decided that it didn't work with the top.  It got put into a box and largely forgotten.

My mother-in-law saw it when she was visiting and told me that the only top that it would match well was a black-and-white top, and I knew instantly it was going to go with my next 100 Days quilt.  I like to have a loose theme for each one (they are all scrappy) and black-and-white was one I hadn't tried before.

I was also excited because I had a lot of black-and-white novelty prints, like these birds, that are too big to cut up for most of my scrappy projects.  The Kinship pattern uses squares of all sizes so I could fussy cut to my heart's content.  I used a lot of blacks and whites from my scrap bins and made a rule that if I grabbed a fat quarter from my fat quarter stash I had to use up the whole thing in the quilt.

When it came time to finish the quilt, I knew I didn't just want a big black and white blob.  Ange had recently posted a picture of her Kinship sampler with stunning green sashing (I can't find that photo, but it's in the background of the 100 Days main page as well), so I decided to go for the same effect with a pale green fabric.  I staggered my blocks up and down using a small sashing bit on either the top or the bottom, then put a half-inch finished piece of sashing all the way across between each row.  If you count, you'll find that not all the blocks made it into my finished top.  Sacrifices had to be made for the whole thing to come out square!  Since it's a sampler quilt, I'm not too bothered by that.  And, of course, only my least favorite ones didn't make the cut!

To finish the quilt, I did a meander on my domestic machine.  The top thread is a light green to match the sashing and the bottom thread is white to match the back.  The binding is a black-and-white stripe that got auditioned as a potential binding on almost every quilt that I've made in the last two years and then rejected for some other safer and more solid option.  For this quilt, I didn't audition any bindings, I just made it out of this fabric and sewed it on before I could really think about it.  And I love it!

There you have it, the eighth version of the 100 Days 100 Blocks quilt-along event as sewn by me!  Will you be joining me this summer as I give it a go for the ninth time?  I hope you'll consider it!

===============================================

Pattern Links

Kinship Fusion Sampler (the quilt in this post!)

Maple and Eucalyptus (the new pattern for this year!)

If you like how I cut the birds, I highly recommend the Marti Mitchell Fussy Cut Ruler.  I also use it for fussy cutting and for trimming flying geese and HST.

All three links in this section are affiliate links, which means I get a small kickback if you purchase anything from them at no additional cost to you.

===============================================