Sunday, February 7, 2016

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


8 comments:

Marjorie's Busy Corner said...

I really like all the different quilting

Julie Fukuda said...

Very creative finish. I share your take on variegated thread but it all came out great.

Barb Neiwert said...

I love your quilt! And I had to laugh about it being up on your design wall so long. Sometimes genius just takes time!

Amy said...

Three thumbs up! Oh wait, that's the red blend from Columbia vineyard speaking. Two thumbs up! I love the texture of your quilting in the first picture. This will be a great quilt for snuggling. I actually like variegated thread, and am impressed you used up that massive quantity. That's a lot o' quilting.

Deborah OHare said...

Well done! Love the texture in this quilt. You have inspired me to keep going with my UFO :D

Catherine said...

Laughed at your drunken quilting moment:-) It's a beautiful quilt.

Carol said...

It is fun to see the progression of the Quilt. I think the dark border really helped pull it together.

Cindy said...

I love how you show the full evolution of this quilt! It's beautiful! Thank you for participating in the FAL, on behalf of the 2016 global FAL hosts.