The Ohio Quilt -- Slow Sunday Stitching

This is my Ohio Quilt.  Something took hold and I started working on it this week.  I should be working on my OMG project for July, but I was inspired to finish this before we go on our road trip.

Do you think I need to replace the "washed out" blocks that aren't dark enough for the border of the state?  This is just going to be used in the car and in our living room.  It's not a show quilt.    Since I have taken this picture I have been working on replacing most of the "washed out" outline blocks.  

Oh never mind... I picked all of the "too light" blocks out last night and replaced the outline blocks!  It was too dark for another photo, but I'm glad I did it.  It looks much better.

Here's the new pictures:

Ahhh.  The borders of the state look much better.

Here's a picture of Northeast Ohio.  We live in East Canton -- the yellow star.  The red star is Canton which is where the Football Hall of Fame is.  The next red star west is Dalton where I lived the first 27 years of my life.

Here's the culprits I removed.  It didn't really take that long to fix (less than two hours). 

I sorted the light 2.5" squares and the dark 2.5" squares.

I'm sewing these blocks together by machine.  It doesn't count as "slow stitching" to me.  I am using the "slow stitched" blocks with embroidery...

I finally got to some of the embroidered blocks (which may or may not look familiar to you.)  (I haven't had this project in my sew-to-go bag this year at all.)  It's time to put them all together.   I carefully put them together in sections according to the map of Ohio I made on graph paper.

Except for the embroidery stitched on the cities, it has been my "Secret Ohio" quilt.  My plan was to write a pattern for it and sell it on Etsy.  I'm not that thrilled with the new shipping idea on Etsy.  I know that the pattern could be digital and that would eliminate that.

Next I will add an inner border and another border so that this quilt is just a smidge bigger.  I longarm quilt my own quilts.  I LOVE to have a nice solid border (vs. a pieced border) to longarm.  It's so much easier to do an edge to edge design.  Happy stitching, everybody!

I'm linking up with Kathy at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.



I'm also linking up to Cynthia's blog, Quilting is More Fun Than Housework for Oh Scrap!