Finished Picnic!

Finally 😂

I think this top went together very quickly and easily, but then it took forever to quilt and bind. It's the largest quilt I've finished, so that's probably why the learning curve was so high. It's about 218 x 234 cm, 86" x 92".

I named it Picnic because I used up several old food-themed novelty fabrics, as well as some printed ginghams. My design was inspired by pictures I'd seen of a quilt by Sujata Shah in her book Cultural Fusion Quilts. I've blogged about that before here.

Because it's so large I took it to a DIY longarm, but that didn't go well. Eventually I decided to do an all over stipple on my home machine. It was heavy work but I'm satisfied with the result. Hopefully now that I've learned i can quilt a few more the same way.

I also cut two different bindings for the quilt, but it's been so long that I don't even remember what I thought the issue was! Anyway this turquoise one seemed fine when I looked at it this week so I just went ahead with it. It's almost an inch wide, 2+ cm, which surprised me! But I'm just assuming it was a design choice and I think it works fairly well. 😉

Everything is machine stitched because my hand sewing situation is not much improved. 

Anyway I'm very glad to have it done and I plan to put it to use right away! And I'm on a binding blitz right now so I hope to have a few more small finishes to share soon.

Happy stitching everyone! And one more photo for the road...

Rhodie Blooms Flimsy

Rhodie Blooms, my variation on Bonnie Hunter's 2021 mystery quilt Rhododendron Trail, is a finished top! It's quite large, about 87" square at the moment. 

I'm super happy with how it turned out. And I have so much appreciation for Bonnie, who creates this space for all of us to play in every year. ❤

Most of the choices i made in the border were to try and tone down and balance the center, which is very bright and high energy. There are a lot of UV dyes in my fabrics, the white on white constant is quite reflective, and the aqua seems to highlight the pinks. So it is a lot. 😂

Since the flying geese for the border were already made i decided, eventually, to use them. But I also felt the quilt had reached its Maximum Pink Capacity, so I went shopping for the light purple fabric in the inner border. It was my first time in a quilt shop since Covid started! It was really nice to see everything with my own eyes and to talk to other quilters about fabric, lol. I didn't realize how much I missed it.

I thought a fairly dark border was needed to help ground the quilt. I used the remainder of the emerald fabrics from the hourglasses, and pieced them with some turquoise from my stash. The lime strip is also pieced from the leftovers from the center. I think the border did its job, it doesn't feel like the quilt will fly away any more!

So I'm happy to have that all done, and in only five months too! Feels like progress. Happy quilting everyone! 

Growing

Now that half my Rhodie Blooms blocks are sewn I've laid them out with the planned sashing to see how it will all look. I'm happy! Tilt your head because it will be sewn together on point. 😁

If you're familiar with Bonnie Hunter's Rhododendron Trail you can see her block right in the center there. I was playing with that, tried the hourglasses as sashing, saw the star shape, and decided to make that the middle of the block instead. 

I've used a different pink for the outside ring in each block. 

And a few purple fabrics too. I'm glad I added the purple, it helps to ground the quilt. 

I also auditioned a few different fabrics for that pink square in the center of the limes. The almost solid batik in the pictures above feels a little heavy. I was going to go all scrappy for those, but I quite like this floral:

It has all the same colors as the quilt! If I have enough I'm tempted to use it for all the squares. 

Anyway that's half so back to the sewing table! Happy quilting! ❤