Monday, December 27, 2010

Tic-Tac-Toe Boards

On Friday night I finished making Christmas Gifts....and that is only if you consider it was still Friday until I went to bed. If Saturday begins at midnight, however, I didn't finish them until about 3:30am on Christmas Day. What is important, however, is that they were finished and SIMPLY adorable for Christmas and Scouty and Abe loved them!

I bought a kit at my favorite quilt shop, The Ivy Thimble,
during their annual porch sale. They only cost two dollars,
and the kit included everything you needed for the project
except for the fabric of your choice. When I was getting
ready to go out and get the fabric, I opened up the patern
and really tried to figure out what I needed...upon closer
examination, I discovered that the pattern was making it a
much more complicated project than was needed. I adjusted
the pattern, and went shopping. Patricia's Fabric House in
East Rochester was having a sale--25% off of everything, so
I went there for the fabric this time. It was my first time straying
from "The Thimble"...and I am still feeling a bit guilty about it.
Oh well...I will work through it. :-)

I had loads of fun picking out the fabric with Abe and Scout in mind and they turned out wonderfully! Abe's is a bit more complicated. Because of the bright colors, I didn't want to introduce a fourth fabric. The bold  blue has many bright colors, and the orange seemed like a perfect contrast to the main fabric. The white is where the tic-tac-toe pieces play. What made the board more complicated, was that I needed to incorporate the orange into the playing board, and not just use it as the inner border. So, I had to be careful with  measurments, etc. in order to get those little orange squares to  line up. Scout's was just one fabric on all the sashing of the board, and so it was less complicated, but equally beautiful. I chose contrasting colors for painting the wooden pieces. I also made coordinating draw string bags to hold the game pieces they were super cute. :-) Scout's fabric jump off the shelf at me! The different shades of pink, the butterflies, etc. I knew she would love it! Scout even played a round or two with Grandma (my Mom) on her pretty board. She just loved it.

The original pattern had you cutting out 64-2" squares, so you had four tiny little white squares to make up one white square. That seemed like an awful lot of (unnecessary) cutting and stitching to me...especially for a kids game! In the end, I cut 3.5" squares for the the white pieces and the sashing was cut into strips that corresponded. After piecing the top together, the finsihed size was closer to 20"x20" than the patterns noted 17"x17". I pressed the gridded inerfacing that was included in the kit, and decided I didn't like the batting that was included. Thankfully I had enough of the "warm and natural" batting to make two 20"x20" square innerds to my two tic-tac-toe boards.

If anybody wants my specific measurments for the boards, etc. then just e-mail me and I will get them to you!




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