Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Confetti....

Clare is working on a project for a forthcoming market, creating baby quilts for her Retro Baby collection. She has extended the invitation to us with the view, "the more, the merrier".
I've jumped at the chance to produce baby sized quilts after my epic star for the Made in Cherry quilt-along....there's nothing more satisfying in the world of quilting than to have a 'quick finish'. I also took a bit of a risky step and spent some time plotting out what I could make from the stash and cut the pieces in advance. I say risky because I'm very prone to having quite a few projects at various stages sitting in little plastic zip lock bags....but that's a topic for another post....or to be swept under the carpet!
Most of the quilts I've prepared are based around solids and bow-tie blocks and to be frank, I was getting a little tired of them. Then in one of those toss and turn, sleepless nights that turn into mornings I remembered some confetti blocks, inspired by the Block Party book that I'd made months ago (July in fact!). You guessed it, they were wrapped in a plastic zip lock bag....(see the system does work!).
I pulled them out and found that I had 12 x 14" blocks all made from scraps of print and scraps of a range of whites and off-whites. I laid them out, moved them around and had another sleepless night over two configurations for two quilts and the perfect backings.
I really couldn't settle on anything that I was truly happy with and I was trying to work with what I had which also included not buying any more batting. And then it hit me.....use 9 blocks for the front and 3 blocks for the back! Voila...make one quilt not two!I love how this quilt turned out. I really love the mix-up of whites....which is funny because normally 'odd' rubs me up the wrong way but I guess because this quilt is scrappy, I forgive its imbalance. It's also really interesting how the whites change in the light. At night the variations are really obvious, in bright light it's less so. (This shot was taken at around 7.30pm on a Summer evening.) Here is the back. Or the front if you're in a minimalist mood! I love this side too!
The binding is scrappy made from the left over pieces of binding that that vary in length anywhere between 6" and 30". And....wait for it.... I store these in plastic zip lock bags.
This quilt measures 41" square and is stippled.
Clare's brief is to make quilts that groovy mums want to pop their babies down on! Fingers crossed I've met the brief!

3 comments:

  1. Beautiful quilt! What a neat idea! Thanks for sharing!

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  2. What a great way to use scraps! Lovely quilt!!

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  3. That is too cool!! A great story and a GREAT quilt!!!

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