Finished Quilt Tops Always Feel Good

It's been a good week. I wrapped up two more quilt tops and dropped the number of open-ended projects down to three! Yessss.... That means I can start some new ones now without any guilt whatsoever!

A little bit moody with the gray-text backgrounds

This quilt top was started in the 2021-22 winter. I got motivated to trace the wedge segments and then they just sat for a very long time. Finally in July, the sewing started happening. Some quilt projects progress very slowly, sit for awhile, progress slowly and then seem to come together all in a rush. This is one of those kinds, but it always surprises me when the end comes together so quickly!

Not the strictly traditional layout

Last Saturday found me doing the auditioning for layout and let me tell you, it took hours. I couldn't believe how unsatisfied I was with the overall look to this quilt! Though I adore almost every Grandma's Fan quilt that I've ever seen, for some reason this was the actual impetuous for starting on my own. I know, I know. So modern looking with all the white backgrounds! 

Too much?

It seemed like a great use for my text print fabrics, and also some of those brighter fabrics that I often find so hard to use. Altogether these particular blocks just hit me as very 'bland' and fairly underwhelming though. Cue the disappointment. I kept leaving the room and coming back to fiddle with blocks until something made me decide to turn a couple of the blocks into partial or even full circles. Hmm... Now we're talking!

Looking across

Not at all what I was hoping for initially, but definitely much more interesting than anything I'd seen before while attempting this layout. I like the whimsy of only having some of the blocks joined into circles so then of course that took awhile longer to figure all the details out. Where in the quilt? Which colors? Bold impact? Or a softer, fade-away look, where, if you didn't look closely, you might miss the fact that something else was happening in the quilt? So many questions!

A partial circle on the side of the quilt

Eventually I sorted it all out and then it was only a matter of getting the rows sewn together and finally, the quilt top as a whole. It's a super sweet looking quilt and right now, I'm leaning hard toward no borders ever. Or applique. We'll see. I'm not very good about sticking to those sorts of decisions! It was hard to sew the last bits of the quilt together because I was enjoying seeing it draped over the totes as I walked into the quilt room. Every quilt room should have something special to draw you inward, right?

Welcome home, it says!

Next up in the quilt hoop is the 4-Block Tulip Medallion, a finished quilt top since April of last year. Clearly, I'm in a yellow state of mind right now, so don't mind me while I positively wallow in it.

Next up in the hoop!

This is already a wonderful quilt to have in my lap in the evenings. So soft and warm with lots of good cuddle vibes. Why is it then, that I'm already trying to figure out who this quilt is destined to go to? Ha! Sometimes it feels like I have to justify all the reasons why a quilt might end up being mine, all mine....

A sweet, simple feel to this one

After lots of pondering, I'm probably going to mark some sort of cross-hatch for the outside border stitching. Just don't think I want to echo stitch on top of all the flowers {or just outside of them} and then have all that empty space left to fill up. Still thinking and thinking. Definitely don't want to do anything very fussy.

Stitching in the hoop

The other completed quilt top is one that I thought for sure was totally done back in May of 2021. So hard to believe that it's been hanging around for that long! It was an AHIQ Challenge that almost threw me. I'm still convinced that the color palette itself has been behind every difficult decision in the entire quilt!

Ooh, loving that darker blue border finish!

Needless to say, at some point this year, I determined that this finished quilt top was actually NOT finished at all, and instead, was stomping its petulant little feet wanting a border. Anyone following me for any length of time knows this is not the first time this has happened, nor will it probably be the last.

So much better now!

And now that the little basket handle appliqued border has been stitched down and added to the rest of the quilt? It's perfectly obvious something was lacking before. I mean, can you believe the difference in overall look and vibe to this thing? So much more rich and cozy looking now! Something interesting to think about--it took approximately two hours to hand stitch down each border, and then of course, it all needed sewn on by machine when attaching to the center part of the quilt. Would that have been worthwhile to you? And that's not even counting the applique prep time. Am I crazy or smart?*wink

Kind of a lacy-look border!

So next up for the ongoing quilt questions is a set of questions pertaining to 'Reasons for Quiltmaking'. The first three have a lot of the same answers, so I'm going to answer them all in a jumble.

1. Why do you quilt? What does quilting give you?

2. Why do you spend so much time on such a craft?

3. Why do you enjoy quilting? What do you like most about it?

I quilt because I adore the look and feel of quilts and I love the process. Might even be obsessed with the process in fact! There's just something so good and heartwarming about using our minds and our hands to think about and/or work with color and textiles. It's simultaneously relaxing, therapeutic, stimulating and comforting all at the same time. 

There's a puzzle to be figured out. The time and effort it takes our minds to work this out, can shut out all but the worst of the world has to offer. So that's a relief and balm to the soul. When our minds get finished sorting out the various and assorted details involved in making a set look or design, then there's a rush of satisfaction and all those happy endorphins to thoroughly enjoy.

People say that it takes on average, 10,000 hours of experience to master a skill. Whether that's true or not, there's nothing to take lightly about the journey of getting to a stage of proficiency in our chosen craft. Within those hours is a roller coaster of highs and lows--learning to trust in the core of ourselves and have a confidence in the things that we want to express through the makings of our hands. There's a great pride in being able to finally produce an outcome that resonates to the very depths of our being. When I randomly stumble upon one of my more favorite quilts {that I've personally made}, there's this leap to my heart. 'Is that one of mine? Oh, I know that quilt!' And of course I'm already smiling before the recognition even truly hits!

The journey {and joy} of creativity keeps me going, day after day and year after year. I can't wait to find out what happens next! In all the years that I've spent quilting, I would have never dreamed that I could make the kinds of quilts that I do now. Mostly because I couldn't envision where the passion would take me. It boggles my mind that my voice could so clearly be reflected back in so many of the quilts that I've made. How wonderfully real and warm and cozy that voice would be. It makes me want to cry because I'm such a reserved person. How is it that my quilts are not?

When I hand quilt, it quiets my mind and soothes my being. It sorts out the tangled mess in my brain. I've said it before so many times, but it's still true. Quilting makes me a better person. When I give a quilt away, it feels like I'm offering comfort, a hug, or perhaps a little ray of sunshine. And yes, we can buy or give other things to people to help them in their time of need. A quilt just feels extra special. Especially if it's made with heart and soul and not just out of feelings of expectation.

So that's why I quilt. Because I can and also, because I can't not make quilts. 

It Feels Good To Be Making Progress On Something

I actually managed to get quite a bit done in spite of the fact that we had a busy, busy Easter weekend! I went ahead and added a very small coping border between the main part of A-Tisket-A-Tasket and the red hst border. 

A-Tisket-A-Tasket getting a border or two

I'm pretty sure there will only be one more border, of much larger red and gold hst units. It's all cut out and ready for sewing, just need to find the time. Super happy with how it's turning out though. That lighter yellow/gold just made everything shine! So weird because I had dismissed the idea earlier thinking that color would fade into the bottom part of the baskets too much and totally ruin the look. 

It's the whole kit and kaboodle. 61" square

I also managed to keep working on Country Stars. It was sooo tempting to put it up for a good long sleep, but I was not too sure that it might never see the light of day again once that happened. And I do want to get it finished up and gifted sometime this year!

It doesn't look like much, but it makes the quilt look better

I took the larger leaves in the middle of the applique and cut into them again. This time making into flowers with a red bud. It's all so much better now. Then I went ahead with the little stacks of berries, mixing up the colors. Red didn't look right and neither did pink, so I combined the two. It's still not a fabulous top, but overall I'm satisfied. Especially after all the applique was finished up {I thought} and on a whim, decided to sew the darker brown cross circle over the center compass block. 

It's applique and that's important sometimes, to
some people...

It just finished it off in a way that I can quit stressing about now. And I'm sure our friend will love all the little details eventually. It's really not easy to work on a quilt where the connection was never really there in the first place. But I did it. Got all the hand work done and dusted. Now I just need to take a deep breath and find time here this coming summer to get it sandwiched and pinned, ready for quilting!

Getting ready to hand sew the binding

Got all the hand quilting finished up on the AHIQ Hourglass quilt. Would have been done sooner, but the backing fabric was a heavier, tighter weave than I normally work with, something my aunt gave me awhile back. I love all the freebies, but occasionally it's nice to use something that wants to work better with a needle!

Almost ready for the hoop!

Next quilt in the hoop is the HaHa quilt. So crazy, it's been almost four years since this has been a completed quilt top! This one has been such a very long time getting in the hoop. It took over two years to even make quilt top stage. Some quilt tops are just plodders I guess. I don't know what to say except that I've just had very mixed feelings about this quilt from the beginning.

I really do like these words on the quilt

Love it and I well, worry about it. It's been too solid fabric-ish, too white, too many disparate elements, too much, too much. And I had zero ideas about how to hand quilt it until a couple months ago.

The ric-rac borders around the blocks are still a fave too

When I suddenly thought about stitching scallops over the center part. Huh. Maybe that will be the thing to make sort of 'make sense'. I went with the cardboard, make-it-yourself template since the plastic template sheets are so expensive these days. Didn't want to ruin a whole sheet experimenting. Anyway... It's not gonna be perfect and you're gonna see where I adjust, adjust, adjust the design. 

Home-made template for the win

Which might actually make me like it better. There's just something about it not being absolutely perfect that sorta calms me down and puts a smile on my face. Onward ho!

These girls.....

And here's a recent picture of our granddaughters. We had an enormous amount of fun getting to spend Easter weekend with them. I mean, we are The Easters, so it's always been a special holiday.*wink  Loving how chunky little Ellie is getting and how chill she was with us even though it's been months since we've got to squeeze on her. Like my father-in-law always said, if we'd have known how much fun grandkids were, we would have been sure to have them first..... 

When You Start Something Almost Beyond Your Control or Imagining

So here we go, Coronacrazy borders are all stitched down and the top is complete!*whew  This one has been a long slog, in more ways than one. It was started in March of 2020 on a total whim, with the end result always being up in the air. In fact, the end product wasn't even of much concern until later. It was all about keeping busy-hands, mind, body and spirit.

Coronacrazy borders are on

Every decision made after the initial start of cutting and stitching down the 'hills' has been a reaction to what came before. At this point, I'm being forced to call it a completed top. Is it insane that part of me wants to keep going? What in the world could possibly be added {at this point} that would benefit though? It feels done except for the quilting and so that's that.

Looking at a completed quilt top!

It's such a bright and happy quilt to be called 'Coronacrazy', but that is exactly what was happening back in the moment when this quilt was started. Covid-19 craziness. All the beginnings of the stupid lockdowns and turning our world upside down. I wanted/needed lots and lots of distraction.

Love the few areas where the hills stop suddenly

Lots and lots of stitching will do that for you! Later on when it became necessary to think about a border addition, I knew it had to be applique based. With a vine. Lots of leaves. I threw the solid pieced border in between so as to have a good transition. Worried about the color a lot, but went with it because that's what the center of the quilt requested.

One day I was looking at the calendar on the wall in my quilting room and there was the perfect inspiration needed to get going on further applique. According to the information on the back of the calendar, the artist's name is Meera Lee Patel. 

Always trying to honor the inspiration

As you can see, my applique vine is very loosely based on her drawing. Still, why not give credit where credit is due? Her beautiful work sent my mind down the rabbit trail of different sized and shaped leaves and the flowy look that was trying to take shape in the corners of my mind.

Looks like the corners weren't too choppy

I chose the leaf color based on what was going on at the center of the quilt with all those scrappy-look abandoned bits and pits of applique auditioning and prep work. At first it was easy to make lots of different shapes and see the good. Then later on, I wanted to rip several of them off and fine tune them, get rid of the blockier shapes. Nitpicking is not fun because it seems to be terribly contagious. In that vein, I only allowed myself one re-do. That's it. You're done!

Yes it all lays flat

Stitching the leaves was simple, repetitive type work. Just takes time. I never regret any of it afterward though it always makes me feel just a touch anxious at the start. Do I really have enough motivation to finish this? And yet I always do. Even if it's in fits and starts. There's something so wonderfully satisfying about completing the applique on one border side and then the next, checking off the steps until everything can be sewn together as a whole. Then there's the exciting moment when you can start appliquing the various parts and pieces to the corners, over the top of the seams. And wallah! Eventually, there comes the moment when it's ALL DONE! 

Super dark leaves for better value effect

It's just almost magical.*sigh  I came across this little excerpt about creativity by Nick Cave {below} right around the time that I was finishing up and couldn't believe how much it resonated. Though he was speaking to writing, it absolutely can apply to quilting!

The words that resonate

Though I feel a bit down in the dumps these past days, {just recovering from a few days of being sick}, I know adamantly that there are many more quilts in my future. The applique prep work was on a pretty good roll before the sickness and then of course all screeched to a stop. Now my brain feels fuzzy and disconnected and I wonder? What was I thinking? What are THOSE colors and are they worthy? What kind of a design is that? and on and on. All those questions of self doubt and papercuts to the ego. So, so timely to read this excerpt now and just blow it all off. Who cares what anyone else thinks? Yes, I'll be making some blah quilts here and there and so probably will you. But if we keep on pushing forward and paying attention to this 'animating spirit', we're gonna eventually end up with some greater gifts to the world. I think Coronacrazy is one of those gifts. It's such a beauty, totally beyond my imaginings. Which is why it had to start so simply. 'Cuz I'd have never have started it otherwise! I wouldn't have believed in it what it could be. Especially back in March of 2020!

It's Always Better To Have the Prep Work Behind You

I've been busy, busy. Trying to get lots of applique prep done over the last weekend while my daughter was away on vacation. It was waaay past time to pull out Coronacrazy and just get moving on it. While the centerpiece has been done since January, the only thing accomplished since that particular push was the foundation work for this applique border. Letting it sit around and gather dust was only making me feel guilty and even more apprehensive about how it was going to turn out.

Will have to stitch down the corners later

The thing is, the applique border to-be, was really only a figment of my imagination and an odd little scribble on paper. I believe the genesis for the free flowing leaves idea was from a calendar hanging on my wall throughout 2020? but I can't really remember anymore. All I knew for sure was that there was gonna have to be a lot of floor space for this prep work to happen, lots of internal debate and hopefully a surge of creativity and illumination. Yep, I was absolutely dreading it.

A few flowers for interest

It took up the greater part of the upstairs floor, right at the top of the stairs for most of three days. It's an ugly carpet, so sorry for that, but design space isn't usually terribly fussy around here. I started out a little different with this particular border. First I spent some time free-cutting about 25 different shape and lengths of leaves in paper and then placing them along a vine. Okay, yes. More of that. This is the flowy vibe that I'm aiming for. No, not that, more like this? and so on till it started to click. 

Normally I would get a feel for the look that I wanted {on a paper drawing or maybe a quick audition} and then cut out a whole stack of leaves in whatever fabric I had stacked up and ready to use for the border. Just place fabric shapes randomly and make things work. And though I had the pre-selected fabric at the ready, I also knew that I wanted the leaves arranged in a bit of a color wash. Okay. That could be a bit more tricky as the lengths of the leaves needed to vary as well. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? 

Trying to figure out the look and feel of the borders

This time, as you can see, I started with arranging paper leaves on one side of the top border until the look was just so. Then, I carefully selected the preferred fabrics and colors as I went, tracing the proper leaf shape onto the back of that fabric. Uh huh. I basically went leaf by leaf, sometimes getting into a groove where I could cut two or three out at the same time. Woo hoo! It was painstaking because I didn't have enough fabric to just waste it in a big flurry of optimistic cutting. 

With the shape decisions out of the way, cutting one leaf at a time in the 'hopefully correct' color let me immediately see if the color wash was happening like intended. The ironic thing was, after getting all the leaves in place for the first total quilt view, I immediately started rearranging a few chosen leaves until the overall color was was simply a variegated look instead. Oh well. No one ever said the design process was easy, simple, straightforward or even made a lick of sense. You just have to roll with it till you hopefully come out the other side!

The overall picture of the intended applique

After getting through one half of the top border {and leaving the cut out leaves in place as a reference point}, I switched to the other side. Though I tried not to get too 'matchy, matchy', it helped to use repeating colors for cohesion. Then I worked on the bottom border etc. etc., always choosing to determine the tips of the vine leaf colors first. If I got stuck or spectacularly frazzled somewhere on a vine, I would switch to the other end of the border and work backward until I found a way to transition more gracefully. No sense working myself into a snit because a certain leaf didn't want to behave! Might as well take my attention elsewhere and give us both time to reflect.

It really did take a lot of time, hours and hours and hours in all. Now you know why I needed the upstairs floor completely free for days at a time! At first I just did a rough cut around the traced leaf shape on the fabric and placed them on the border as-is, thinking I could clean up the shapes later. Which I did in some places and others not so much. 

As the borders started developing, leaves got shuffled and moved into better position, leaves got trimmed a little curvier or slimmer or shorter or whatever seemed to be needed. More leaves got squeezed into the space, or less. Other times a whole group of leaves was jettisoned completely because suddenly there was a brilliant idea that needed addressing! Some areas I fussed with entirely too much, causing the invariable confusion and despair. An opportune time to leave and take a good long break. Coming back later with fresh eyes usually helped tremendously to see immediately what the problem was and well, have a hope of actually solving it?

All in all, there is only about six or seven unused or discarded leaves at the finish, so I count that as a win! And I didn't run completely out of any important fabric, pull out any hair on my head or even have a temper tantrum just trying to have clarity in what I was trying to convey!! hehe  So yeah. Prep work is totally done, the leaves are removed from the corner areas and carefully labeled for later stitching. These borders are finally in the backup handwork bag and waiting for their turn in the hand stitching queue. YAY! I can't even imagine what was possibly holding me back from this particular phase of the quilt, can you?

Baby quilt should be a finish by Thankgiving

I also finished up with the simple applique on the borders of the baby quilt, all borders attached and it's even sandwiched and pinned! This one is already in the hoop and I've been hand quilting on it for a couple nights now. So sad to have to put a pause on Bullseye Medallion quilt as I had finally made it all the way out to the outside borders. At this point it always feels like an easy couple nights till it's all completely finished, but I know better. I know, I know... The outside area generally takes much longer than we expect and well, it will still be there and waiting for me when the baby quilt is all done and ready for gifting.

Can't wait to get back to the stitching on this one

While I still had the floor available, I went ahead and made time for stitching up the sashing strips on CrazyDaisy. Though I was pretty sure they would be a go, you just never know for sure till the auditioning moment. 

Crazy Daisy starting to come together

Though it's not obvious in the picture, the cheddar and lavender squares seem a little bit 'flat' in comparison to the Daisy blocks. Overall I think that's a good thing. Gives the applique a chance to shine brighter. Like they need that? Hmm... Originally I intended to cut the sashing from a stripey fabric and make them fairly narrow strips. This way gives a little more breathing room, yet still keeps the energy high.

This is the setting triangle fabric that I settled for

After seeing the blocks with the sashing strips and the cheddar cornerstone squares, I was not impressed with how blah that cornerstone color was. I finally settled on a deep purple batik fabric to use {probably not an outstanding choice}, but it does exactly as intended. Helps 'pop' the dark curved strips in the blocks and further define the flowers. Not every color/fabric used has to be exceptional to work extremely well 'in situ'. 

These cornerstones look better to me

This quilt was supposed to be a very blue quilt and I'm not quite sure what happened? Somehow it veered off into this wildly exuberant explosion of color. So very, very energetic and crazy, I'm actually starting to call it 'circus, circus' in my mind! So far the only thing that I regret about this quilt though, is the fact that it's going to end up square. I probably should have gritted my teeth and stitched the extra blocks just to make the quilt come out rectangular. I did consider that for awhile, even thought about leaving off one row of blocks, but no. That would mean ditching seven applique blocks! Ha. Not happening. I'm actually very ready to move beyond these wild {for me} colors and work on some projects in more benign colors for awhile!

Odds and Ends

I'm slowly getting a little bit of quilting done on Bullseye Medallion. I say 'slowly', because it seems like I've been skipping every other night lately. Oh well. At least there's something happening with it even if it doesn't look like much!

Hand quilting Bullseye Medallion

It's a long story, but the short version is that I got totally distracted by a squirrel last week. It started out with a mad dash through the orphaned/abandoned blocks totes and ended up being eleven doll quilts. 

Little doll quilts

These simple little orphan quilts were gifted during an annual harvest party {for the women in our church} early this week. The older women were having a lap quilt/throw exchange and I decided the littles needed something so they could have fun too. It made a couple of the girls sooo happy!

An opportunity to use up the elephant, kitty and bunny fabrics.

I ended up bringing three back home with me, so yay! One of my granddaughters will have doll quilts for the Cabbage Patch dolly pack I bought for her Christmas. The best part of the whole, three day funfest of making, was that I used up over 700" of leftover binding! Wallah! That tote closes ever so much better now....

Plowed through a lot of short pieces of binding

While that crazy squirrel idea was fun and a tiny bit gratifying, the underlying point was that I was definitely avoiding getting busy on the latest baby quilt..... Not that I'm dreading it you understand. 

Hst's for the wrench blocks

It's more that when a project suddenly becomes a 'have to', then sometimes I get a little stubborn about wanting to. Which didn't last long and next thing I knew, I was knee deep in marking, chain stitching, joining together the wrench blocks, and just generally doing what I was supposed to be doing all along. Just a short little journey until all the blocks got finished up, sewn together in {hopefully} proper color balanced rows, and thrown up on the wall for one last look-see.

I probably should have changed out the color in the centers

I folded over the top and bottom of the quilt thinking that would be preferable to making the side and top/bottom borders different widths. Just chop it off and have a nice, easy border fix. Nah. I could tell immediately what a horrible idea that was.

Applique prep is coming together

Today I finally quit fiddling around with different ideas and what-ifs and just made myself pick something. Anything. My daughter-in-law had laughingly said that if this baby turned out to be a girl, the quilt would need flowers all over it. Okay then. We'll at least put them on the borders! 

The side borders are 5" wide, so I decided to put larger flowers there. After a quick search through the applique parts and pieces tote, I started with one leftover tulip and a long length of potential vine. That gave me a starting place, but I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of tulips for ALL of the side flowers.  I really don't know why that look doesn't appeal to me for this particular quilt? It was a simple matter to grab some fabrics and cut out some very basic flowers to audition. And just that easily, I was satisfied.*sigh  Where's the manual? You'd think I could learn to fast forward past the fiddling and dinking around after all of these years....

The top/bottom borders will probably be lollipop flowers made with more of that vine length and whichever of the coral fabrics that look the best. I'm 99% sure that's the plan and yes, the vine is cut and ready to go. Gonna have to get the side borders all stitched down before I totally commit though. You just never know for sure how your brain envisions something and the reality of seeing it in right in front of your face! Right? I'm already feeling the buzz of pleasure that tells me I'm probably on the right track for making a sweet, but not too sappy little girls quilt. Lets hope the hand work goes along well as I need this quilt done by Thanksgiving weekend!

Another Difficult Quilt Top All Wrapped Up!

Here it is! A completed quilt top for the Positive Thinking challenge over at the AHIQ blog. This prompt was introduced in June of 2020, more or less encouraging us to keep going with whatever form our creativity allowed considering the stresses of the year. Doing anything 'positive' based seemed like a reach at the time {and even later}, but turned out to be a really great idea. Most of the intention behind what I do is for a cozy, happy, comfy outcome, and it was a timely reminder to keep on trying.

Positive Thinking quilt top is done!

It was also suggested that we might want to chop some of our clothes up in the getting-started phase. {Begin with the comfortable and familiar.} I cut up about six or seven shirts and used them to determine the base of the color palette moving forward. The cream print fabric behind the raspberry pink letters {and those same pink letters} are from two of my favorite shirts that I wore for years. The blue shirting fabric in the middle of the quilt is from a barely worn shirt from my husbands closet, and then there are two more of his shirting fabrics that made it into the quilt as clamshells. The other shirtings were dumped into the stash totes without being used at all. No worries, one of these days I'll dig them out and introduce them into yet another quilt!

What do you think of the whatchamacallit
at the bottom of the words?

So yes, those specific fabrics being used mean something to me, causing the quilt to feel a little more special. The decision to attempt another 'wordy' quilt was actually quite simple when I thought about trying to project positivity. It's all in the message, right? Coincidently, there was a suitable one that had been pinned up on a board in my quilting room for eons. 

Cutting and sewing letters together doesn't take a tremendous amount of creativity once a person gets started. It's more of a formula and that seemed to be a good thing last summer. Like maybe I could coast through at least part of the process on auto pilot! Ha. Of course there's always the phase {or two or three of them} where everything comes screeching to a halt and Very. Important. Decisions. Have. To. Be. Made. And it's usually in the details that later appear so thoroughly nonessential, but whatever. I made it through and finally got to the puzzle, getting the words and background to fit together in a way that hopefully everyone can read!

Bright, happy flowers

I ended up with the cream/black pinstripe fabric as the background because I loved the way it blended with the one cream shirting fabric especially calling out to me. The old fashioned charm was irresistible and also, there looked to be enough to hopefully take care of the entire background. Generally I'm okay with mixing and matching background fabrics {making-do}, but wanted something more controlled this time around. The stripe made me a bit nervous initially. Stripes?? But after I made the decision to put each word into its own 'box' of sorts, then the rest fell into place and started making more sense. 

No leaves this time

There were plenty of stops and starts getting it all pieced together. Energy would run very thin on the ground occasionally. What am I doing? What am I actually trying to accomplish? If I do this, use that, then where does that leave the emphasis of the message? 'Cuz you know, changing up the value of some of the colors per words, makes a huge difference in how the message could come across!

It's a wrap!

Fabric usage was carefully planned out ahead, but you can only do so much because of the waste involved. You can only imagine how thrilled I was when the cream shirting behind the pink letters was just enough and then later, when I was trying to puzzle piece the entire background into place, having the perfect amount with barely a scrap or two leftover! 

Originally I wanted every single word to have the same exact cream shirting background but it simply wasn't possible. Waahh! That's why I paused part way through the letter making and spent some time considering. How do I move forward in a way that doesn't mess up the whole {imagined} look to the quilt? Eventually I just had to do something and leave it up to chance as to whether or not everything could/would come together. So that's where the blue background shirting came into play. Off on another tangent and we'll just have to see if it makes or breaks the quilt!

Also, the greater background was pieced intentionally with the stripes positioned on the vertical. All except for the very bottom of the quilt where I had no choice but to sew a narrow strip on the horizontal. It was a scary hairy determination to make as I worried it might 'waste' too much fabric and potentially leave me lacking enough to finish. The main reason it seemed important to deliberately choose one direction or the other was to eliminate extra chaos from fabrics being placed into the background willy-nilly. Since the theme was to be 'positive', it felt necessary to at least try to eliminate as much noise as possible. So yeah, that's one more area of this quilt that makes me super happy. It's a very small detail of the quilt, but almost boggles my mind. Lets just say it again.... the stripes are all going in the very same direction!!

The clamshell background is much whiter
than the cream center, but it seems to work.

Once the middle of the quilt was totally pieced, then I let it sit for a good long while. It was tempting to wrap it up and say 'It's a finish!', but honestly, the whole message thing was a bit too much for the totality of the quilt. I almost wanted to say in return, 'Oh yeah? So what?' With nothing but words to look at on the quilt, it seemed to make the quilt feel almost aggressively opinionated and I didn't want that vibe. Besides, I was pretty sure it needed applique. I mean, lets be real. How could there possibly be that much background space on one of my quilts, and not have a flower somewhere? It was always meant to be.

A couple months went by and the quilt decided that it probably needed to have borders. Almost any border would do, but didn't clamshells sound interesting? So I pondered and played with the idea until coming up with the scrappy 6" clamshells plan. Big enough to more easily learn the new-to-me technique, yet not so small as to get buried in the minutia of 'not quite good enough'. Mistakes were made. Things are far from perfect, and yet... I love it! Adds such a wonderful exuberance to the quilt. Definitely helped lift the quilt into a place of confidence and meaning without the overbearing quality it had before.

These strange blue colors are difficult for me to work with...

And then before the clamshells were completely finished and attached to the quilt, I finally settled on the applique flower addition. They are MUCH brighter than I ever intended, so in-your-face happy to be on the quilt. Wowsers. Dial it down a bit, could you? hehe  Why does it take more than just words though? They just aren't enough by themselves sometimes, especially on quilts. In fact, at the very end of adding on all the applique, I felt compelled to add on the little curly-cue or whatchamacallit thing as extra emphasis there on the bottom. Like an underlining of intent that I mean this. I feel this. Does that make sense? Laughing at myself here because the quilt was a little too overbearing without the border and applique and then after? Not quite serious enough. These quilts. They just love to run us in circles, don't they?

I know that not everyone will appreciate this quilt as much as I do {already figured that out by showing it to my mom}, and that's okay. Personally, I'm very, very pleased to have pushed through with this particular challenge. It was a good one in so many ways! There were definitely times that I sincerely thought the quilt had lost its way. What a drab little nothing of a quilt! And then, this. Plus, I finally got over my fear of playing with clamshells! Just goes to show that attempting the occasional challenge can take us on an unexpected, but wonderful adventure! Next AHIQ challenge is Symmetry/Asymmetry. I'm only a little behind on getting started!