Popsicle Quilting

A week ago, my Tuesday staff meeting got cancelled so I got a bonus afternoon of sewing and finished the piecing on the Popsicles quilt.  I spent the next couple evenings trying to square up the edges and contemplating borders. I had planned on adding more white applique highlights, something I forgot about the evening I was motivated to sandwich the quilt.


I was envisioning Blue-Fuschia-Peach.
I had the blue and fuschia in the stash.
Peach was missing and problematic.  This was to pale to give contrast to the pale sections.

 So off to the quilt shop.   But nothing in the tone I envisioned.  These were the only peaches that weren't super pale, and then the contrast of the fuschia disappeared.

 I played with lime as an inner border, but it seemed too yellow compared to the others.

 In the end, I swapped the Fuchia for a purple that ends up looking black, brown or magenta depending upon the light.  I was very concerned about the outer edges flaring too much b/c of the bias edges.  I also got excited about a time saving idea, that in the end added 1.5 hours of ripping and re-sewing.

Surveyed the thread stash and found that I had 70% of what I needed.  My friend Beve dropped by with some of the missing colors for the outer borders. 

 So far, I have 2 session of quilting.  Round 1 was stitching in the ditch to outline major sections to help stabilize the quilt, get rid of the pins and figure out how I'm going to manage all the puckers.  The upper photo is 2 hours worth of FMQ.  Below is a close-up showing where I'm trying variations to thread color and density of quilting to try to make some highlights from the original painting.

And the final picture in this round is the quilting from the back.  About 5 hours total so far.