Scrabble

Yesterday I worked on an old project that I started probably a decade or more ago.  Back in the day, when the kids were young, our family used to play Scrabble a lot.  I got the idea to arrange all of our names on the Scrabble board, as if it were a real game of Scrabble.  I then transferred the layout to graph paper, including all the word and letter score spaces.  I wrote down the letter values for all of the letters of our names as well.  I bought Aida cloth and cross stitched all the "tiles" I needed to spell out the names.  I cut out the fabric squares for all the word and letter score spaces.  I cut out muslin for the blank spaces until I used all the muslin I had (which wasn't much).  I started sewing the squares together into 9 patch units.  I got the first 5 units sewn together, but then I needed more muslin.  I bought the muslin and washed it, but for some reason I never worked on it again until yesterday.  It's funny how quilting projects get set aside and abandoned like that.

I still need to decide what I'm going to do about adding borders to it.  I had bought some Scrabble fabric online a while back, but I don't think it really matches the color value of the rest of the quilt.  It is bright fabric and the center is much more muted.  It might work for the back of the quilt, depending on how big of a border I add to it.

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend copying this idea exactly.  The Aida cloth is the problem.  If you were starting from scratch on this one, I would suggest applique for the letter tiles instead.  The Aida cloth is very stiff, so it is difficult to press the seams.  The stiffness of the fabric also causes the seams to be thicker.  I tried to use a scant 1/4 inch seam to allow for it on those patches, but the quilt is still a little drawn-in in the areas where there are a lot of Aida cloth patches.  I also assume the Aida cloth will be difficult to hand quilt.  I may try to straight line machine quilt it, if I can ever get a walking foot that works.