Patriotic Pups

At a recent fabric blowout sale, I found some really cute dog fabric for a mere $3.00 a yard.  Perfect for a Quilt for Kids donation.

I was carrying the bolt around under my arm, waiting in line at the cutting table, when 2 other quilters both admired it.  By the time my turn in line came, I got my 1 yard cut, and the two other quilters were negotiating about how to divide up the rest of the bolt between them.

Now that it was home with me, what to do with it?  I thought I would alternate large squares of the dog fabric with 4-patches of coordinating fabrics.  I pulled out anything from my stash that was striped or checked in colors that would match the dog's bandannas.

After I cut the dog fabric into 8 inch squares, I realized that the print was busy enough, and decided to alternate with plain white squares instead.

The only thing I had to pay attention to when constructing this quilt was to make all the dogs facing the same direction.  I also fussy cut the squares just a little bit to try and center as many dogs onto the block as possible.  I had enough of the fabric to cut the borders so that all the dogs could face the same way as well.

Now I just needed a little inner border to separate the squares from the border.  I hunted around in my stash and found this:

It was a baggie containing some leftover pieces from this quilt.  It was very rewarding to have finally found a home for those.  They had been waiting since 2009!

Anyhow, the quilt top all came together quickly after that, and the result was this:

The stack of red white and blue fabrics that I originally pulled for this quilt, ended up becoming their own quilt, but that's a story for another post.