Evolution Finish

So, this is a rather long post as it was quite a journey of quilt learning for me.

 This project started with some blue and green triangle pieces that were given to me by my friend Emily when I was working on the Turquoise Double Wedding ring.

I added the green floral which was a dress that I made, the apple green from the Big Ass Cat, and the yellow plaid which was a second-hand sheet I used for the back of a quilt.

I arranged the HST blocks on a piece of flannel.

This much hung on the wall from July 2015 until January 2016.

One evening, it occurred to me that I should extend the blue line and square idea out.

I started auditioning scraps.

And I found some orphan blocks and a Spoonflower sample fabric.

And " Evolution" evolved.

With some things I liked, and others that I just tolerated.

Improv piecing can be fun, but doesn't always have the outcome I'd imagined.

Then I realized that it looked much different when viewed from a different angle.

I added dark frames until I ran out of fabrics.

I wanted it to be larger, but 60" x 74" makes a decent lap quilt.

The quilting started out well, especially after I found this square flower by Lori Kennedy.   After the second design of hers that I randomly picked from a google search of designs, I started following her at The Inbox Jaunt.

I have a strange Love/Hate relationship with variegated thread.  I Love how it looks on the spool.  I Hate how it looks on the quilt. ( with the rare exception of match stick quilting, which I rarely do.)  I make a post about how much I hate it about every 6 months.  So my goal was to use all this crap up.

Mission accomplished.
5 spools gone and 2 more skinnyfied.
(There are still 5 spools in the stash in other colors so there will be more complaining on this topic. )

I had a few rare moments when every stitch turned out exactly the way I imagined it to look.  Perfect feathers!  The right shape, even stitch length. Wow!

A zen moment when I actually felt like I was a really good machine quilter.

Balanced by the Drunk Feathers.  There was actually a section worse than this that had to be un-stitched following an evening of Cabernet.  (Apparently, too much of a good thing is too much.)

I was testing some design ideas for another UFO quilt.  Borrowing from ZenTangles.

After washing.

Another borrowed design was this 3 or 5 petal flower.  Which when I was spontaneously stitching, turned out like this.  I could argue that it's a leaf not a flower.  It was easy and forgiving as any weird wiggles just make it better.  And the echo makes it cohesive.

After washing view.  Did not pre-wash to get max shrinkage.

And the best part?  It's done!  Linking to the Finish-along.

My original goal list post