Lotto Tops

I’ve been making lotto blocks for Sunshine  (an online Yahoo group for making charity quilts) and winning them back occasionally for the last several years. Although there is a monthly theme, it is sometimes a challenge to make all the blocks play well together.That, plus choosing colors for sashing and borders, is all the design work involved–sometimes it is enough to stretch my brain. Sometimes I keep one block that doesn’t work into groupings in the hope of getting some mates later on. Sometimes I make blocks to add in. Sometimes i make do.

I have won bright blocks a couple times, boyish prints, novelty prints, floral prints, and a couple color groupings, most recently blue and yellow. I finally gathered them all together and started making tops.

42 x 48

This one was a color experiment.  I am not unhappy  with it, but not thrilled either. It was intended to be 50 inches long, but I’d been cutting 3 1/2-inch strips for sashing and forgot to shift to cutting for 4-inch HSTs. It was easier to make 8 more HSTs than to start over. Then 4 more because I’d forgotten to add in the width of the sashing. I decided that was enough HST work for a while. On to straight borders.

42 x 50

I was considering a narrow red border then navy, then I remembered the striped fabric.I’d wanted something to tie in the “extra” colors in a couple of the blocks. The planet print block, lower left above the Ohio Star, is one that had been waiting for mates. Happily there was a space themed block in this blue and yellow set.

The next quilt tops don’t have a border–they can be used as is, or I may add a border later when I dig into fabric for backing.

42 x 42

This one also benefited from waiting. I’d laid out the arrangement sans the middle top and bottom blocks. I’d wanted something somewhat like the white, gold, red blocks. These came in a more recent batch.

36 x 48

This one had been laid out ahead, but I’d had only one purplish block. I was happy to be able to add two more from a more recent winning in place of what I’d made do with before. Most of these blocks are from the boyish-print month. See the big bugs? Another top that benefited from its time out. If I add borders, they will be dark green or blue.

36 x 36

I gave about one-minute of thought to setting these blocks on point, but 33 inches or 50 inches seemed too hard to work into the preferred measurements of the groups. I decided that baby quilts are often wrapped on the diagonal, so the hearts would show then. These were from the floral month winnings.

36 x 48

This one started out with orange as the unifying feature. Needless to say that got to be too orange. So I swapped out blocks one by one until I got it toned down just enough.

When I have pairs of matching blocks and am working with a big variety of blocks, my formal balance instincts kick in even though I like to work asymmetrically otherwise.

I still have enough blocks for 4 or 5 more quilts, depending on what size I make from them.

ETA: Linking with Oh Scrap! because at least some of these blocks were made from other peoples’ scraps and Move it Forward Monday (links in sidebar).

 

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