I started this quilt at the beginning of March. I had no idea how long it would take or how many decisions I’d have to make as I assembled the blocks, fit them together, planned the back, figured out how to quilt it….

I finished it this morning (with two weeks away from the work while I was in Italy) so working time on the quilt – about five weeks.

Quilt Top

Standing back from it now, I think the decision to use the light turquoise Kona cotton narrow inner border was the right one – it brings out the blues of the inserts which create the stems and leaves of the bamboo. I also like the choice of the border fabric which makes the inner panel stand out and at the same time echoes the hues of the panel just a bit darker.

Quilt Top – Detail

My plan when I started thinking about the quilting was to create some kind of single run embroidery design to fit my 360 x 260 hoop – I set up a double design to run bottom to top on the right, then repeated top to bottom on the left. The design stitched out well but my spacing when doing the hooping wasn’t close enough and I was left with quite a few spaces that still needed quilting. The solution was to create three more designs, narrower and shorter, to drop into those spaces. I wasn’t sure I liked how the quilting was turning out but now it’s done the space is filled pretty evenly. The border quilting turned out as I wanted it to. I’m happier with the quilt than I thought I was going to be!

Quilt Back

The back strip is a wide (13″) strip more or less crazy quilt pieced using bits left over from the top fabrics. It carries over the colour feeling from the front.

Binding – dark blue solid Kona cotton.