Double Irish Chain Quilt "Elusive Foxes"

Here is my lap size Double Irish Chain quilt I’ve named “Elusive Foxes” because the foxes in the fabric appear and disappear at random. I cut the fox fabric in strips and didn’t fussy cut the foxes to have them centered in the pieces.

This is a small quilt l because I just wanted to trying making a Double Irish Chain. It was only intended to be an exercise in quilting, but it’s turned out to be a sweet little quilt.

To really see the striking chaining design, this quilt is best viewed from a distance.

I quilted the open space in the blocks with a single flower. You can’t see the quilted flowers because the fabric is so busy. But I know they are there!

Here is close-up of a quilted flower and the back of the quilt showing the fox fabric.

Double Irish Chain Quilt Top with Elusive Foxes

I needed to cut a some extra strips to finish my double Irish chain quilt and finally found the time to get that done. It enjoyed assembling this quilt top, but I must say, I didn’t realize how awesome the dark green double chain is until I hung it up and stepped back to take this photo.

I think that the 4 tiny tossed green floral prints in the alternate blocks might detract from the overall look of the quilt. I can see how stunning a double Irish chain could be with just a solid color and with white alternate blocks. I can see blue and white, green and white, or red and white.

I made this quilt just for fun, with fabrics I had, just to try making a double Irish chain. So accomplishedmy goal. I learned I could strip piece sections of the blocks and and if the back ground were a single fabric, then the entire block could be strip pieced. I would recommend cutting the fabric strips to half width of fabric (approximately 21 inches) as the shorter strips are easier to handle. That’s what I did when I sewed the strip sets for this quilt.

The backing is going to be the fox fabric, so this is going to be lots of fun when it is finished.

Double Irish Chain Quilt with Elusive Foxes, Work in Progress

My 6 month Black Labrador old puppy is keeping me very busy but I did get a window of quiet this week to start assembling my Double Irish Chain Quilt. The foxes in the fabrics are tossed, so they aren’t all going to be upright in the quilt. It’s just fun to see how many of the foxes end up in boxes and whether they are on their way in, way out or upside down!

Here’s the pooch, thinking about whether to swim to get the stick I tossed in the river! She’s new to swimming so her decision was to keep all her paws on the riverbed and give the stick a miss. All good!

Double Irish Chain Project

I’ve had some kelly green fabrics in my stash for years and pulled them out a few months ago. I’ve never made a double Irish chain quilt, so decided this might be the perfect project for these fabrics. I had a green that reads solid and another green on white in 4 designs that is a good background fabric. But I needed one more fabric. My stash doesn’t have a lot of yard plus cuts, so I had to get imaginative. Finally I pulled out a fabric with foxes on it that I decided would be a fun contrasting fabric (the yellow in the diagram above).

Here are the fabrics for this quilt.

It will be interesting to see how many of the little foxes appear in intact in the 2 inch pieces (the yellow squares above) in this quilt!