The Revolving Door at Our House

Our house is quiet today...my youngest son went back for his last semester of college yesterday, my middle son started a new job today, and our house guest (of the past 7 months) moved out a week ago into his own apartment in anticipation of the new semester starting next week.

One of the projects I worked on in December was a quilted throw as a gift for him.

While it wouldn't qualify as high-end design, there is a little story behind it.

My son's friend, Niyi, needed a place to stay while he took a semester off of college.  His mom lives in another state, but he had a good summer internship outside Philadelphia.  So my d.h. and I invited him to move into our house until he returned to school.  In the evenings, he would ask me to play chess or a board game.  After beating me at chess in three moves, we switched to Scrabble. Two or three times a week, we'd engage in a lively game.  Sometimes I won, sometimes he did.  One thing I learned is that the Scrabble dictionary of acceptable words has expanded greatly in the past six or seven years, a phenomenon I attribute to "Words with Friends."

When I saw the licensed Scrabble tile print fabric at a Quilt Show, I knew I had to buy it to make something for Niyi.  I bought the outer border and backing fabric at the same quilt show, but found the blue, yellow and red prints in my stash. I picked a simple block to create a border around the tile fabric.

Our friend is quite tall -- over 6 feet.  I needed to make the throw a bit longer than the panel came, so I split it in half and added a piece of blue stripe fabric between the two.  I had one row of  tiles left over, so I incorporated them into the corner blocks.

I decided to machine quilt this myself, so after I pinned the layers together, I set up my machine with the stitch guide and quilted diagonal lines 2 1/2" apart across the throw, not including the borders.

It is just a little something to send along with our friend.  I hope that he treasures it as much as I treasured our evenings playing Scrabble!

Our friend Niyi at Christmas.