Last week I shared a quilt I entered into Bits ‘n PIeces Quilt Shop’s Three Yard Customer Quilt Challenge. Here is my 2nd entry. (Head over to Bits ‘n PIeces Facebook page to see all the quilts in the competition, and vote on your favorite).

This bright cheerful fabric line called “Sunny Fields” was just released by Clothworks. It was designed by Sue Zipkin. It was one of those fabrics…when I saw all those sunflowers on one of Bits ‘n Pieces Facebook unboxing videos I went right to the computer and purchased it!

The pattern is a three yard pattern by Fabric Café® called. “Kaleidoscope”. This is really a classic quilt pattern.

But there was a challenge with this fabric. The butterflies flutter in many directions but the flowers all are directional, standing tall on the fabric. But this is diagonal pattern. What to do? Try to get the flowers upright or just let them be jumbled?

I thought about it while I was walking the dogs. It came to me that there was a way to get the flowers all going in the same direction.

One way that half square triangles are constructed is by placing two squares of fabric, right sides together. Then a line is drawn on the lighter fabric from one corner to the opposite corner, diagonally. A seam is stitched 1/4 inch on each side of the center line. Then the block is cut along the center line, yielding two half square triangle blocks.

Here’s what I did. With the flowers standing upright in each square, I drew the center diagonal line from the lower left corner to the upper right corner on 1/4 quarter of the square blocks, and then from lower right corner to upper left corner on another 1/4 of the squares.

THEN I flipped the remaining half of the blocks upside down so that the flower stems were at the top of each block. Then I drew my center lines the same way as above.

And it worked. All the flowers were facing upright. I sorted the blocks into the four groups and that made assembling the quilt easy. Each block was either dark upper quadrant left, dark upper quadrant right, dark lower quadrant left or dark lower quadrant right.

However, I did make an error sewing my strips together. Instead of sewing block to block across the strip, I sewed them in pairs. I accidentally flipped one of the pairs upside down in one row. The pattern was correct, but in those two blocks, the flowers are upside down. Oops!!

The quilt was fully assembled and I was sandwiching the layers of the quilt when I saw what had happened. I thought about taking it all apart, but then decided that since with this busy floral fabric, it just wasn’t that noticeable. And left as is, it’s a teachable moment. See if you can find the upside flowers! (I’m not telling)!!

If I were making this quilt again, I would probably tone it down! (It is busy, busy, busy!! But fun)! There is a lovely light green fabric with dark green dots in the “Sunny Fields” line. I would use that with one of the sunflower fabrics in the half square triangles and use the butterflies as the border.

But I do like this quilt as is. It’s the quilt you’ll want to grab if you need to stay AWAKE! Not the one you should choose for a nap!

Here’s the back.