My triplets have graduated from college!! That sentence is a heart stopper for me. I am so blessed to have these amazing humans in my world and the fact that I was blessed enough to be their momma makes me incredibly thankful. Of course, a big event like graduating from college also requires a quilt to be made in commemoration. Thus, the Louisville Spirit quilt was born!

However, because there are three of them.... that was a HUGE project! I wanted to make something fast, simple, and something that didn't require a lot of brain power because being a mom to triplets has drained mine! HA!

BirdMan's graduation quilt, called Louisville Spirit, is featured in the March/ April edition of the Love of Quilting Magazine. I designed it using the colors from his college, the University of Louisville. I dug through my stash and found more red and black/white strips than I realized I had. (Isn't that the way with scraps?).

I really love the ease of making strip quilts but I wanted to spice it up a bit by making the strips a little off center. Normally you'd lay the first strip down on the diagonal of a block and add strips to each side until your block was as big as you'd like.

What I did instead was position the first strip a bit wonky off the true diagonal. This will mean some of the blocks are "left" and some will be "rights". However, my brain can't do that. I can never remember what is a left orientation of a block and what is a right. So... I think about the map of the US. I need some blocks where the strips go from Washington State to Florida. I need an equal number of blocks where the strips are laid down from New York to California. That way I know I have the right and left versions needed to make the diamonds form in the Louisville Spirit quilt.

Throw in a few pops of yellow for the Cardinal bird beak that is the UofL mascot and I really love how it turned out. Plus, I did this with a quilt as you go method using fusible batting. Be sure to watch the Louisville Spirit episode for more info about that time saver!

If you'd like to buy the pattern for Louisville Spirit you can get it over on the Quilting Daily site. And, if you decide to make one of your own, I'd love to see it! You can share your quilts with me in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse on Facebook, or tag me @quiltedjoy on Instagram!

I must confess that I've only had time to make one for two of my kiddos- BirdMan and GooseyGirl. She got the blue and white version pictured above. I've assured RocketMan that his quilt is coming and that I love him just as much as the other two! :) Now I just need to clone myself and get that last one done!