Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Phew! Finsihed.


Sewing most of the day I added the border the border and binding on this quilt, plus the border is machine quilted with a twisted ribbon pattern. This is a two-sided stash buster. I love two sided quilts, including ones that didn't necessarily start out to be two-sided but became so because the back is interestingly pieced. All the fabric in this quilt is from my stash. The five-inch squares that make up one side are about 80% charms I received in swaps. I especially like the ten or twelve that are from Australia with Australian motifs. The little two-inch squares in the center of the other side are also from a long term accumulation in my stash. Likewise all the other fabrics. [And still the stash doesn't seem to have shrunk!]

I pieced the brown/white side over a long period of time. Each 5" block was quilted as I went along. I put it aside now and then and thought I I would stop at 60, 80, 90 -- there are 140, the center is now approximately 50x70 and the border is 4 inches, thus the whole is 58x78, a good size for a single bed.
It was put together with Sharon Pederson's method. The last photo here shows some of each side, it was laying on the floor half put together and half not.

The most fun part was that when I laid it out on the floor with the 5" squares up, I had to mark the brown squares with a safety pin in each so I could be sure to get a checkerboard. I took pains to arrange the squares [so they don't look arranged but don't clash with each other -- much]. But I had no way of telling what kind of pattern of the centers of the checkerboard side I would have. I hoped I didn't get all the blues on one side and greens on the other. I feel they turned out rather nicely random -- and I loved the surprise of seeing their pattern once the entire top was together -- in fact that was my favorite thing about making this quilt. I love [controlled] surprises.

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