I love every quilt I make – OK, maybe it takes finishing some to see their true beauty, but I have to say that this recent quilt has got to be at the top of my list! I call it: Rainbow Time
I don’t normally blog about all the quilts I create, but this one proved to have some interesting twists and turns.
As many of you know, I won a prize for turning my Row by Row H20 quilt for 2015 into Sandy’s Quilt Shop in Joshua TX.
My prize was:
25 Fat quarters of my choice
3 yards of any one fabric
I was so excited, and at first (with basket in hand) I was overwhelmed at what to do! In no time; however, I remembered a quilt I saw that I knew I had to make – the double hourglass. From that point on it was easy. I simply chose vibrant rainbow colored batiks and a gorgeous mottled background fabric.
The fabric families are:
Fat Quarters: Wilmington Prints Batavia Batiks: Mini Dot and Flourish
3 Yards: Wilmington Prints Essentials: Cosmos Lt. Ivory
As many of you may also know, I just don’t do kits or patterns – I have way too much fun starting a quilt and seeing where it will take me. This quilt did not disappoint.
I started by making 42 blocks using my Fons and Porter Half and Quarter Ruler. They consisted of 3″ strips sewn together then the triangle was cut and then they were reassembled in the double hourglass configuration.
As a long-arm quilter, I appreciate when the BACK of a quilt is pressed as flat as possible. The image below shows the blocks from this vantage point.
All this seems sort of normal and regular, and in some ways it was until I looked at all my scraps from cutting out the half triangles. I just hate to waste and decided that there had to be a way to cut them up to form a border.
YEP! It worked like a charm.
Of course, I did not have quite enough to do the entire border, but that was fine because I had enough fabric left from the fat quarters I used to make some interesting piano keys in each color to frame two corners.
After the top was pieced, I then had to think about backing and quilt patterns. While I love to do custom quilting, I decided to do an edge to edge flourish pattern that added some softness to compliment all the sharp lines and edges of the top. For the backing, I took a risk and went with a floral pattern that has the same type of mottled background as my accent fabric for the top. Now the quilt is, in effect, reversible. There is a funky, colorful side and a more demure, classy side.
Like I said, this quilt was fun, challenging and I loved it right from the start – how many of the quilts you make are a joy from beginning to end?
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