Beware the Ishmaelites: Moda Modern Building Blocks, Resized for Anders (Again)

It has been a busy couple of weeks, filled with a last-minute beach getaway to Kiawah, SC, my husband's trans esophageal echocardiogram (90% good news from that), and then racing off with Lars for New Students & Parents Orientation at Appalachian State University. Somewhere in the midst of all of that our dishwasher died and the kitchen ceiling fan came crashing down from the vaulted ceiling and smashed on the floor within a foot or two of my astonished husband, like the climax of The Phantom of the Opera.  I am just beginning to dig my way out of accumulated mail, laundry, dirty dishes, and other debris.  

But I did remember to measure Anders' Queen platform bed so I could tinker around with resizing his Moda Modern Building Blocks sampler quilt:

Beware the Ishmaelites, Moda Modern Building Blocks Resized to 94 x 104

The Queen mattress measures 60" x 80", but I don't need an extra long drop because of the platform bed style.  I decided I can live with a 10-12" drop on the sides, and more like 16" on the bottom (I like a quilt to really wrap around the bottom of the kids' beds; it helps the quilt to stay ON the bed rather than ending up on the floor in the morning).  Then I factored in a 10% shrinkage rate, because I plan to enjoy myself custom quilting this sampler and I know that the more densely I quilt it, the smaller it will end up.  I was able to keep the center of the quilt the same size (the wonky 70" x 80" size I resized it to a couple years ago, NOT the original size from the FREE Moda pattern), and got the additional width from the borders.  Before quilting, my top should measure 94" x 104", and that should yield a nice size even after I quilt the dickens out of it and run it through the wash.

Original 84 x 96 Moda Modern Quilt Blocks Quilt As Shown at Quilt Market in 2014

This is the original Moda Modern Building Blocks sampler, a free pattern from 2014.  My version uses Kona Solids instead of Moda fabrics because I don't have a swatch card for Moda and I wanted to match the colors of this wallpaper:

Wallpaper in Anders' Bathroom, Colors Matched to New Quilt

This is an old photo from right after the wallpaper was installed, but I STILL love the wallpaper and I think it works well for a teenager.  This vanity area is open to his bedroom, and when we updated the space for him last summer I swapped out the green cabinet knobs for contemporary brushed nickel knobs and I painted the adjacent bedroom walls the same off white color that you see in the wallpaper.  I've matched the exact shades of red, golden yellow, blue, and green to Kona Solid fabrics and incorporated those shades into his quilt, and I've made just this one block so far:

First and Only Block Completed, 30 inches square

I bought all of the fabrics Way Back When, but I'll probably need to purchase additional yardage for the new side borders that I've added.  Anyway, now that I know it's going to fit his bed again, I can get back to making the blocks.  Most of the blocks in this quilt will be either foundation paper pieced or pieced the old fashioned way, with templates, because when I resized the quilt the first time I strayed from "ruler friendly" block measurements.

Oh, and why am I calling this one Beware the Ishmaelites, you may ask?  Years ago, when my boys were MUCH younger, they were in a vacation Bible school play about Joseph -- the Joseph who is the favorite younger son, and his mother makes him an amazing coat of many colors, and his older brothers are jealous so they sell him into slavery to the Ishmaelites and tell their parents that Joseph was mauled by a wild animal.  In the play, my oldest son Lars played the part of Joseph and my younger son Anders was the brother who sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites!  But in real life Anders is the younger brother, and as you can see, his quilt has MANY more colors than his older brother's quilt does...  Also, Anders' old quilt, the one that I made for him when he was three years old and had a frog infatuation, was called Anders' Froggy Quilt of Many Colors:

Anders' Froggy Quilt of Many Colors, 2006

Funny story about this quilt, one of the very first ones I ever made: Originally the whole quilt was supposed to be flying geese, but I struggled so much to get the triangle points just right and spent so much time ripping out stitches and redoing them, that I finally had to just add a giant border of strips in order to get it to a size that would fit the bed.  And I cringe now when I look at this jumble of too many prints and colors, but at the time, little dude was digging those froggy prints and that was all that mattered!

And so, the Moda Modern Building Blocks sampler becomes Beware the Ishmaelites in this version, for my no-longer-little Joseph Anders.