This quilt has been a year in the making. Amber, at Gigi's Thimble ran this as a quilt along. There were 36 blocks, one per week. The blocks are all machine paper pieced. Papers are available at Gigi's Thimble. The blocks finish at about 12 inches. My finished quilt is about 76 inches square.
Here it is on my bed, fresh from the wash. What made me want to do this quilt along was two things. The paper piecing, which I used to hate, makes such crisp blocks. Also, Amber showed a picture of one she'd done in pink and green like this and it really spoke to me. Most of this quilt top is made from my scrap bins and stash. I did have to buy some neutrals. I never seem to have much in the way of neutrals.
These are some images of the quilting, before I washed the quilt. I cut a 12 inch half circle out of cardboard (thank you Amazon) and marked each square's design on the front of the quilt before I quilted it with my walking foot. There is one block you can see here below, that is not scrappy. That was a deliberate choice.
The straight lines through the center of the leaves run on the diagonal, from edge to edge. It seemed to need the extra anchor of this long stitching from edge to edge. And it worked well within the design.
I used a Hera marker for a lot of the inner blocks, but after awhile, I found it harder to see my lines. So I tried chalk, a marking pencil, and finally, a graphite marking tool I bought at my LQS probably 15 years ago. That was the tool that helped me bring this over the finish line. There were several times when I thought I must be crazy for quilting this on my Bernina 440. It has such a small throat space. But, I was patient, or tried to be, and got through it all. It took me 7 days to get it quilted and bound.
And of course, today I had another small issue when I was attaching the binding. Oh, my goodness, I was never so happy for a finish.
For the back, I bought 2 1/2 yards of Bungalow in green and 2 1/2 yards in pink, by Amy Gibson for Windham Fabrics. I found it on sale somewhere, and the two colors were perfect for the backing, being green and pink.
And, as a bonus, I only had to seam it once! Hurray! I trimmed off all the extra and saved it to use for the binding. I ended up only using the pink, as I thought that would look best.
This is another picture with pins in it as I am still quilting it at this stage.
I used another one of my new labels on this quilt.
And, you can see how nice the binding looks on the quilt. The four corner blocks have these little stamens, or antennae on them. I had thought to put them on every block, but when I saw them on one, I changed my mind. And, rather than rip them out, I put them in each of the other three corners for balance.
It washed and dried up so nicely. It is so soft. And that's what I wanted, a soft drapey kind of quilt. There are lots of seam lines in this quilt, so a little less quilting made that happen. Thanks to Amber for a wonderful QAL. I had two quilts on my bed, but I added this one too, because after all, it's still winter.
