Long Time Gone gets Longer

A while back I finished sewing  my version of  a quilt called "Long Time Gone", a pattern  by Jen Kingwell.

The finished size was a 66" square but I wanted to make it longer so that it would fit a twin sized bed.  My plan was to design an additional strip that would be sewn to the top of what I had so far in order to create a longer, rectangular quilt.

To begin, I created a section of Tumbling Block units (that I wrote about here)  and that was as far as I had gotten.

Here we are in 2020 with plenty of  dedicated stay-at-home time and I knew it was time to get back to work on this.

 I wanted to have a section of little houses so I began with those.  It was fun to choose all the fabrics for the houses, doors and roofs.  These little guys each measure 3 X 4 inches.

The houses unit would be sewn to the left of the tumbling blocks, and I decided on Friendship Stars to go on the right side:

The pinwheel centers of the stars have a finished measurement of only 2".

I needed one more narrow strip of blocks to make the additional section wide enough, and I chose some Card Trick blocks.

These blocks required a good amount of concentration to keep the orientation straight, but I loved the end result.  They measure 3 inches, and made for a darling little filler strip:

As I finished each of the sections, I laid them out on the bed near the previously finished quilt top to see how they would look.  As you can see in the photo below I also added a horizontal filler strip of one inch squares, under the Friendship Stars.

I was pleased that the vertical sashing strip between the Tumbling Blocks and the Friendship Stars would line up directly on top of a vertical sashing strip of the quilt top I had made so far.  This would help keep the newly created strip  from looking like the add-on that it was.

Eventually, it all came together into a new, longer quilt top!

Designing the top row to compliment the rest of the quilt was a challenge, and actually took several days to complete.  The hardest part was coming up with design elements that helped balance the dark and light areas of the rest of the quilt.   I feel good about how it turned out and can't wait to get it quilted.

STATS:
   Number of pieces in the Houses section:  110
   Number of pieces in the Card Trick section:  120
   Number of pieces in the Tumbling Blocks section:  306
   Number of pieces in the Friendship Stars section:  180
   Number of pieces in the previously finished part of the quilt:  2414

  TOTAL number of pieces:  3130