A Colorious Quilt

I started this quilt eleven years ago!!  And quickly ran into trouble.  It has been on my To Finish list every year since then, and I am thrilled that it is finally done.

Colorious

Here are the highlights and low points of trying to make this quilt:

1) In 2012, a blogger posted pictures from the Canberra Quilt Show.  That post is still up, and if you follow the links, you will get a PDF of her quilt show photos, and you will see the one I liked.   The colors in the original were scattered throughout the quilt; I wanted to make one that looked like it was glowing.

2)  I started making blocks, I cut the large squares at 5 inches square, and the small squares and black sashing at 3 inches wide.

3)  I ran out of my good black fabric, and got distracted with other projects, so I put the blocks aside.

4) In 2016, I saw Angela Pingel’s version, which inspired me to pick up this project again.  A kind blogger had suggested that I mix in gray fabric for the sashing and that was a good idea.  Also, at some point, I had learned about the Disappearing Nine-Patch method, which seemed like a quicker, easier way to make the blocks.  I made a bunch of new blocks, but with the new construction method, the small squares and sashing strips were only 2.25 inches wide, resulting in finished blocks smaller than the originals. The 2012 blocks had to be trimmed all around to fit.  (All of those problems are dealt with in mind-numbing detail in this post.)

Needless to say, I got distracted and set it aside.

5) This year I resolved to finish all the things!  I finished The Scraps Escape, which I like, and Spools quilt ,which I don’t like but was happy to finish, so now it was on to this one!  I knew it would be hard to quilt with my domestic sewing machine, so I lightly quilted the top to the batting before I added the backing.  That worked pretty well, but then going back and re-quilting once the backing was on took forever.

This quilt has so many problems.  In some places, pieces of the same fabric are right next to each other; there are lots of spots where things aren’t lined up properly; the quilting took forever and it is not good, AND right at the end, my machine started skipping stitches, so there are squares that are not quilted at all yet, but I don’t care!  But I love all the colors, and it is finished, and it is just for me, and I will never again try to make such a large quilt on a regular sewing machine!

Category : Colorious, Quilting
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