The whole quilt top is made from the scraps that I hand dyed. (I blogged about that here.) I did use two half-yards of fabric that Tonya had given me one Christmas to outline the log cabin pieces, but they’re the same tone as the turquoise that I used. The entire rest of the quilt is from that dye experience.
I like it. These fabrics look like they might have been worn by people coming through Ellis Island. They’re so sepia and sort of plain, but really intricate if you look at them closely. All of the plaids are woven, not printed. Some of the fabrics have even been brushed to peachfuzz on one side. And I think the randomness of my design is very like a really old utilitarian quilt might look. Cobbled together from whatever pieces there were. (Which is just what I did!)
Initially, I thought I might sew all of the strips together, and then cut them to make diagonal stripes, so I made a lot of looooooong strips. I cut the plaids along one stripe in the fabric (since this is woven plaid, it was either with or perpindicular to the selvage.) I also just pieced the charms (squares) together as they were, didn’t do any flying geese or even triangles. I then stitched a few stripes and a few charm strips together to make aprox. 2-foot wide sections, and then arranged those together. Then, yesterday, I decided to try a few log cabins. I hadn’t ever done any, and they look so nice (in other peoples’ quilts) so I threw a few of those in, too. Finally, I laid all of the big sections out next to each other, cut the longer strips and used those to lengthen the shorter ones, and it came out to be almost a perfect rectangle, with very few scraps left over.
I’m going to use a big piece of Tina Givens fabric for the back. It’s a nice purple and turquoise that I think will really compliment the front. It needs a whimsical fabric on the back.
I’ll let you know when I get it quilted! I’ve got two quilts that are just waiting on binding and then I can cross them off the UFO list. I don’t want them to languish too long…we all know that the longer they go unfinished, the more used we are to having them unfinished!
This is going to be a bear to lay out and sandwich! It’s at least 8 feet tall. (I need to measure so I can buy my batting!) It’s too expensive to have every quilt professionally quilted, so I’m going to try to tackle this one on my home machine. Because of all the tiny pieces, I want to quilt this one pretty tight (lots of lines). I’m predicting at least a couple of months’ work. I’ll keep you posted.
ETA: It’s 8ft 4inches by 7 feet 4 inches! We sandwiched it on the patio the other night, and I rolled it up so I could start quilting. It’s HEAVY.
