Thank Goodness For Quilting

I'm going about it all backwards, but the stack of tulip blocks below represent my answer to the #AHIQhourglass prompt over at AHIQ. Yep, I'm diving head first into yet another tulip quilt. The challenge was given out in January and I'm only now getting to it--so many internal questions about where to take this. You'd have to know that I've been mulling it over inside this brain of mine for almost the entire time.

Chunky Tulips

Where's the hourglass you ask? Well, that's going to be in the sashing units between 13 of these tulip blocks set on point. What took the most time is that I wanted the tulips to be red, but had my misgivings about the reds in this particular fabric stack. They tend to lean to the tomato-red side of the spectrum and I just wasn't sure that I was okay with that. But then in these uncertain times, decided why not. Go for it!

And then came the decisions about background fabric etc., which always is a challenge in and of itself. Never have large enough pieces of fabric, thus the blendy strips added to the block. Hideous fabric {so late 90's} but it should fade away to nothing once the quilt is all put together. 

I'm hoping to make the hourglass units in a subtle play-off of the neutrals and keep them very low key. We'll see. The thing that I'm happiest about at the moment is the blue/white print for the stems. Just love the energy it adds! Though the tulips will be similar but different fabrics overall, the stems will all be the same. My default was wanting to go searching for a green fabric for the stems and everything inside of me was rebelling. No! Do something different for a change! You can find the inspiration for these tulips over here. As you can see, my focus is not quite 'there' on the hourglass part of the quilt quite yet....

Coronacrazy Quilt

I've been spending some time in the quilting room here and there, getting some of my lists tidied up and running in and out with all the various pieces of fabric that might need to be soaked before cutting into. If you count the stack of fabric that I gathered together just yesterday, there are now 16 different stacks of wonderfully promising potential quilts. It's a bit over the top, I admit! but so much more rewarding than catching up on all the latest grim and terrible news. I am staying off the computer/phone even more now, but there's just no getting away from it completely.

You can thank me later, I just deleted four paragraphs of ranting about our current state of affairs here in the lovely state of Washington. Frustrations abound and I have questions. Enough said. Moving on....

The lists and inspiration board

Okay, so with that in mind {my general attitude and precarious emotional state of late} it's absolutely not surprising at all that I impulsively started a brand new quilt. Kind of a crazy one so yeah, I'm calling it Coronacrazy. It's the so-pink-it's-almost-red hills and valley's quilt up above. I took Sharon Strouds advice and have already thread basted the bias applique down. Why didn't I think of that? The whole thing is about 41" x 46" so having pins falling out while stitching is not a great plan. Love that its all ready to go whenever I feel the urge to get stitching too. The tentative plan at the moment is to applique some very small flowers in the open areas under the arches. And then from there I will probably add on a border or two or three. Perhaps more applique on them? I really don't know, don't even care. Will decide when I get there! The entire idea came about almost overnight and for some reason it felt right. Notice that I'm prepping lots of applique these days? lol

Hand quilting on Shimmer

I've also been hand quilting like a madwoman the last couple days. First I stitch at with a purple/black thread on the insides of all the purplish rectangles, emphasizing the overall design. Then I come back and echo stitch on the outside of those same purple rectangles, in the cream areas, with a mustard gold thread. Also, there is a double line of stitching in the very middle where 7 colored rectangles meet up. I've finally found my groove with the stitching and while it's not free sailing quilting where the seam allowance is extra thick, the rest is fairly relaxing. Which is good news. The whole thing is starting to take on a little bit of an old fashioned charm which really surprised me but shouldn't have. It's finally, finally coming together as a win, something I've been a little bit dubious about. All that scrappy goodness plus hand stitching, I should have know. It was bound to happen sooner or later! Though I will say it would have probably looked great with machine quilting as well. Not mine! But someone who knows what they're doing.....