A few months ago already, I won a pack of 5-inch quilt blocks, perfect for an I-Spy quilt. So this past weekend, I dug into them to see what I could make.

A typical I-Spy quilt is packed with blocks of all different novelty fabrics, lined up edge to edge. I couldn’t wrap my head around that kind of chaos, so I decided to showcase each fabric a bit my adding a border around it. I went to my stash and pulled out a few solids and near-solids to see what worked.

I knew that I wanted to donate this quilt to the local Ronald McDonald House, and their size requirement is 40 x 40 inches. After a bit of math, I decided to add 1.5-inch borders to my 5-inch blocks and place them 6 across and 6 down.

I played with the layout a bit, trying the colors in order, randomly placed, etc. And I just wasn’t feeling it. I finally decided that the blue solid was bringing down the party.

All but the yellow fabric are shot cottons, over-dyed fabric with super saturated color. And the blue regular solid just felt so dull. So back to my stash to see if anything else would work.

There I found a blue that was a lot brighter and more fun. It, too, is a shot cotton, and while it’s darker than I was initially going for, I think it works a lot better.

Again I played with the layout, and then I remembered this blog post by Kelly Biscopink, Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild member and former colleague. In it, she discusses her childhood love of rainbows. At 5, she remembers sobbing for fear that she’d never seen one in real life. Hmmm. Let’s try rainbow order.

Of course, this rainbow doesn’t have a red, and it’s heavy on the violets, but will a little kid in love with rainbows really care? I hope not.

I had many scraps of the solids, so I sewed them into strips that I’ll somehow incorporate into the back.

I haven’t decided on the quilting yet. But I’m thinking I will quilt each row with a matching thread. Sounds like good opportunity to expand my thread stash!