Now if you've followed my blog you know that I traversed a range of emotions with this quilt. First I was red hot for the plan of this modern quilt (so not my regular style) done it batiks (so not my regular choice of fabrics). After a few blocks I was trending towards "ummm... not so sure about this"...followed by "oh my goodness this is bad." Now I persevered and assembled all the blocks and got the border on it. About this time I was warming back up to the look of this quilt, but then I needed to quilt it. I'm not sure why I decided I needed to quilt it as I routinely send my tops out to be quilted, but I pin basted this one and off I went. Within the first 20 minutes I remembered why I prefer piecing to machine quilting, but I soldiered on. It ended up taking a lot longer to quilt than I first thought as the more lines of quilting I put in it, the more lines it needed. I almost broke my arm patting myself on the back for finishing this one and hung it in my living room. I was still on the fence whether I liked it or not but the longer it hung there the more it grew on me and now I do LOVE it.
It stretched me to work in this earthy batik palette versus the brights I normally select. I did enjoy doing the improv piecing. The idea for this quilt came from the book Stack, Shuffle and Slide by Karla Alexander - you can see it here.
This is the second top like this that I made from this pattern. The first one was in crayon brights - you can see it here - but I haven't gotten around to quilting it. I do think that this excursion into another style of quilting was good for this old dog and I did learn a new trick or two.
Here are some close-ups of the blocks - I do wish I captured the color better in these first shots.
This one is the best picture with the truest colors.
I hope you enjoyed this quilt and I know you will have a ton of fun seeing all the other entries!
happy stitching-
carol fun
