I’m happy to show you this finished quilt! Layer Cake Explosion was the Twilter! quilt-along. The design is by Angela Gross, and you can find it on Craftsy.
Because I used wider sashing, my quilt measured a whopping 93″ square, which was tough to cram under the machine. In a moment of particular lunacy, I thought how nice it would look with a double batting…but I quickly regained my sense, and went with just one layer (Pellon’s Nature’s Touch 80/20). This is a new batting to me, and it was fine, but didn’t seem a lot different from the Warm cotton I usually use. I did like the careful way it was folded in the package, which made it very easy to trim and position the large batting. Yes, it would have looked wonderful with double or extra puffy batting, but it’s just fine this way. Yuri checked.
For once I feel like I did a good job designing the quilting. I was influenced by Wild Quilting by Christina Cameli, which I watched on the free Craftsy day. No, I didn’t do improv quilting like she did, but I got her message of echoing things to give them depth. So where I would usually have made one Orange Peel motif in a block, I echoed each twice. I also added a line to each of the border circles. All the quilting on the top is Superior Rainbows 9808, Opal) and the bottom is pink Bottom Line.
By including the sashing with each block, I was trying to quilt 11″ circles, just impossible to control on this bulky quilt. I knew that, but I wanted to try and I’m glad I did. Some of it is imperfect, especially near the center, but I still like the interlocking circles.
The quilting improved greatly when I finally put on my quilting gloves. I hate them, they’re hot and itchy, but they really worked in this situation.
Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew posted just last week about quilting large quilts. I agree with almost everything she says (especially about quilting-by-checkbook!), except for spray basting. It really doesn’t take much to hold the quilt. You know that I usually use just a little, just barely wafting the spray over the layers. This time I was concerned about holding this large thing together, so I gave it an extra waft. (Still using that can I started in January.) I used my Ping Pong table, basting the center first, then moving it to baste each side. I couldn’t be more pleased with the way it held. I had no shifting and not a pleat or wrinkle on the back! I used twelve bobbins of thread to quilt this.
Speaking of the back, somehow this star landed perfectly in the center. Notice the quilting from the block on the other side. Could never do that again!
It’s important to have a quilt photography assistant who can climb trees.
Thank you, Daisy for leading this project, and Angela for sharing your pattern.
I’ll be linking up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, and Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.
A finish! Â A post about Layer Cake Explosion in a few days.
And… a large amount of fabric came in. Â It’s for a commissioned quilt, and I wish I could say that it will all go out again soon, but there will be lots left over that I will need to put to use. Â So.
Good luck on all of your goals! Â Right now I’m feeling fortunate to have food, water, and power, and I hope you do, too.
This is the last one of these, I promise. I’m all out of the fabric, even the scraps (I have a few flannel giraffe squares, but that’s different.) And this quilt may be my favorite.
This was not on my list to make right now, but when I saw 
I quilted it all with the walking foot. First I stitched in all the ditches using silver Bottom Line. Then I auditioned three green variegated threads for the the decorative quilting. I chose the So Fine (Superior) on the right, just because it was the lightest. I always prefer bold, contrasting colors (hence all the dark threads in my collection), but I wanted to keep this soft and blending. Light thread looks okay over darker fabric, but dark thread on light shows every wobble.
I like minimal, asymmetrical lines of quilting, so I kept thinking I was finished. I did want to do enough to hold down all of the fabrics, including the small pieced triangles. When I put the last rows of stitching in, it all came together and I knew I had it.
You know all that progress I had been making on destashing? Â It went out the door this week. Â I guess it could have been worse, since I was shopping at the fabulous 
Here’s a photo for you, in case you have too much color in your life. Â Either it’s raining cats around here, or Yuri hopes he’s camouflaged while waiting for a chipmunk to come by.
My finish this week was this baby quilt for donation. Â (If you need a Zebra quilt, you can find 
There are surprise flannel text patches mixed in on the front, but the backing is quilting cotton.
I had a pleasant time quilting ribbon candy and matchsticks across this using a pastel variegated Rainbows thread from Superior.
Here’s my latest finish. Â It’s a fun size (48″ x 60″), and was quick and easy to make. Â It includes two Star Wars fabrics, some batik, some metallic print, another gray print, some blue Grunge, a blue geometric, and some Kona Ash. Â I found these scraps while straightening some of my fabric drawers and decided to make them up for donation.
How do you keep your blocks in order for assembly? Â Usually I number them using Crayola Washable marker. Â This time the blocks were too dark, metallic, etc., for the marker to show up on most of them. Â Instead, I used numbered bits of blue painters tape, which was really more work than I wanted to do. Â These stuck long enough to get the blocks to my sewing machine, and it went together properly. Â However, the tape started to come off as I was sewing and stuck to everything else in sight. Â I wore a few numbers to dinner that night, and I am still finding them. Â Please tell me a better way!
The quilting was a lot of fun. Â The light-colored diagonals are sewn with Superior NiteLite (glow-in-the-dark) thread, and I experimented with some decorative stitches to put a little more thread on there. Â I use gray Bottom Line for the swirls and ribbon candy.
I pieced the back with more of the scraps.
I haven’t decided where I’ll be donating it yet, but I have a few ideas.
Here is the second of the small donation quilts made from 7.5″ “log cabin” blocks. Â These have the large 3″ centers again, and I didn’t even bother with “logs”. Â I just used 2.5″ strips, arranging the colors to imitate log cabin blocks. Â I set them in the Barn Raising design. Â It finished at 42″ x 63″ before washing.
Like 
This quilt will also go to 
These aren’t traditional log cabin blocks. Â The centers are large, and there are only two “logs” on each side. Â They are only 7.5 inches square, and there are fifty-four of them. Â The quilt came out 42″ by 63″, but that was before it was washed. Â I didn’t piece these to a foundation, just started adding to the center squares. Â That made it much easier to chain piece them.
The colors are inspired by both Spring, and the backing fabric.
I quilted this with Sulky white and Superior Living Colors pink thread. Â The bottom thread is Bottom Line. Â The batting is Warm and Plush.
This is going to Margaret’s Hope Chest for a program called 
Evening in the Garden Quilts 