Animal City Sampler

This beauty was from a massive quilt-along: sew all 100 blocks from Tula Pink's City Sampler Book in 100 days.  Starting on August 17, 2016 and ending on November 24, 2016, I sewed along with Angie at Gnome Angel and made one of these blocks daily.

I decided I wanted to make my quilt scrappy but still have some cohesiveness, so I sewed each block with one animal novelty print and one solid.  This was easy at first, but there were days where it was a challenge!  I also used 100 distinct animal prints, which got a little touchy towards the end.  My "rule" was that I could use the same piece of fabric for multiple blocks as long as I was cutting different animals out each day.

I finished strong, but wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the blocks, so I put them in a stack in a box and let them be.  But, then Angie started another round of the same quilt along challenge.  It seemed silly to make all the blocks again when I hadn't done anything with the blocks from the first go-around, so I set a personal goal to finish my quilt before the new quilt along ended.

I found my setting during show-and-tell at a meeting of my local quilt guild.  I'm not sure what this "half square" setting is actually called, but it was perfect for this quilt.  I was able to use the framing to plump up a few blocks that didn't finish at exactly the right size in a way that wasn't completely obvious.

For the layout, I had my kids sort the blocks based on the color of the solid used in each one.  Then we counted the blocks and I came up with a rough plan of where each color should go.  My favorite block went in the middle of course!

The back is mostly a fabric that my mother-in-law found at her local thrift shop and graciously gave to me when I said that I "needed" it for this quilt.  It's offset with some largish pieces that I had in my stash.

For the quilting, I just did an all-over meander in gray thread - there's enough going on already!  I was worried about how the blocks were going to come together without looking like a big mess, but the two-tone gray sashing set everything off perfectly.  The binding is a fun neon print, also found in my stash.

This quilt was photographed and then immediately claimed as a bed quilt by my oldest son.  For the eagle-eyed, yes, the finished quilt actually only contains 99 blocks.  The final block was used as a filler in my Moda Building Blocks quilt.  I actually prefer the 9x11 layout to a square 10x10 layout, but that's just personal preference.  Oh, and I finished it well ahead of my goal - it was done on day 80 of the second quilt-along!