It's Friday and I'm Finished!

I'm finished just in time for Friday Sew-N-Tell!  That is to say, I've finished one step in the long cloth-to-quilt process.  The Whirligigs quilt top is pieced, and in the process named itself after the villains in the Beatles' Yellow Submarine movie.  Introducing the Blue Meanies!  See the resemblance?

I think it's interesting how the immediate dramatic element is those light hourglasses, rather than the pinwheels. It's one of the exciting parts of quilting - seeing what unexpected effects emerge from the block pattern and initial design. Now, I have to tell you that my points are not perfect, but I plead guilty with an explanation. You may notice that half the pinwheels spin one way and the others go the other way (see lame joke about Australia in a previous post). I pieced all the thisaway blocks a couple of weeks ago, with my regular, devil-may-care seam allowance. Then last weekend, I attended the Square in a Square workshop, with her military insistence on scant quarter-inch seam allowances (and they do look nice, so no complaints). But when I came back to sew up all the thataway blocks, even though I reminded myself to ease up on the seam allowance to match the other ones, I found that the second set of blocks measured, in some cases, a full half-inch bigger than the first set. I was as careful as I could be through the trimming and truing process to size the blocks so that the seams would match up, but it wasn't perfect. Drat. Consider this entire quilt one whole humility block!

Trying to decide if I want a border or not. What do you think?

Blog Inaug!

There's no better way to inaugurate a quilting blog than by introducing a new quilt!  Here's the one I just finished.  I was inspired to do this one by the coin quilt-along on Flickr, plus the rolls of 6" strips of Kaffe Fasset fabric sold by my LQS.  I augmented with additional pinks from my stash.

The quilt is machine quilted with King Tut thread, variegated in pinks.  It's the first time I've done any free-motion quilting with my new (to me) Pfaff.  I'm more or less pleased, although there are some wonky bits.  As usual, my corners are a disaster (no photos of those).

I've discovered that if I set my laptop on my notions box, I can see the screen perfectly over the top of my machine.  So I have been a steady customer at the local independent video store while finishing this quilt.  I find that old movies are best, especially musicals!  One of my rentals was Valley of the Dolls, which I had never seen.  Quite a racy movie in its day, although it seems quite tame today.  The DVD box and the opening credit sequence was full of bright pinks and oranges, very similar to the fabric I was working with.  And so it seemed like the perfect name for this quilt: Valley of the Dolls.

 I wasn't sure about this quilt initially, and I made seat-of-the-pants decisions as I went.  For example, the original KF strips were 6" wide, so I planned 6 x 2 1/2" coins and 2 1/2" sashing.  I sewed all the dark and light pairs and then decided that the coins were too much longer than they were wide.  Does that make sense? They were more like lozenges than the effect I wanted.  The strips at the top and bottom were the original size of the coins, so you can see what I mean.  So I lopped off an inch and a half from all the pairs and was much happier with the size.  I have real problems throwing out scraps, so I kept those lopped-off nubbins.  When I was ready to do some kind of pieced detail for the backing, there they were!  So as I got further into it, it began to grow on me.  And now I think it's so glam and so fab, I hate to part with it.  If I have to pick a fault, it's a touch too small.  At 48" x 60", it's more of a lap quilt than a nap quilt.  

Plus, I wasn't as careful as I could be about block placement - there are coins with identical fabrics too close to others in places.  And the mitred corners of the binding.  Oy.  Those are my downfall.  

And there's a small spot in the middle of the quilt that seems not to have gotten quilted.  How did that happen?  But on the other hand, it's quilted with bamboo batting and has a delicious drape.

It's for my mother-in-law, a lovely with-it woman who loves colour as much as I do. 

P.S.  For those who observe, Shana Tova!