Alayna's Graduation

Last fall I stopped in at my local quilt shop, the Pins and Pieces.  There happened to be a rep there from some fabric wholesaler showing samples to Heidi.  There was a collection of fabrics that I fell in love with.  It had bright happy colors, and a panel with positive sayings.  I expressed interest in it, and Heidi ordered the collection.  It arrived this winter at the quilt store, and I was able to purchase some before the CronaVirus hit the world.  I had in mind to use those positive saying squares for a graduation banner for my granddaughter Alayna. I couldn't decide which of the positive sayings to choose for the banner, so I decided to use them all and make a quilt for her instead.  I'm not sure if there will be an actual graduation or a party, we are all under lockdown still, and social distancing is the rule.  Can't have a party if everyone has to stand 6 feet away from each other!  But I did make the quilt, and it went really fast.  I can't wait to give it to her!

These are the positive sayings:

Alayna's school colors are red and black, so I was thinking of something like this to frame the sayings:

However, the red and black just didn't fit.   Trying again, I auditioned yellows, golds, creams and then a turquoise.  

The tangerine batik was a great choice, and I chose the softer yellow with small orange dots (hard to see.)  The softer yellow reads almost as a cream and matches some of the backgrounds around the sayings.  Perfect.  And the turquoise spoke to me! (No surprise there!)  I didn't have much of the turquoise, but it was enough.  I had to sew the turquoise frames with partial seams around the black-framed sayings because I didn't have enough of the fabric to do the longer top/bottom strips.  But it WAS enough, and I only had about a 4 x 6" pieces left over at the end!

Choosing fabrics always takes me a long time.  Maybe because I have such a large stash, there are just too many choices. It took me more than a day to choose my fabrics, but once I did, The sewing went fast.