Sampler Quilt

It’s All About The Pink – V

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Just finished the pink quilt  – I bound it in the same fabric I used for the wide border. In the end I left the narrow border alone – I began stitching the leaf motif but two repeats of the stitch and I stopped and picked it all out – the stitches weren’t quite even and it just didn’t look good.

It’s All About The Pink – Completed

That’s likely it for sampler quilts – while I enjoyed creating the 63 different blocks, most of which I’d never constructed before, the task is time consuming because each block had to be cut out and pieced individually – couldn’t streamline the process.

The back – because the quilt top is so busy I decided to simplify the back insert – I used large pieces broken up with strips of accent fabric. The quilting shows on the back – you can barely discern it on the quilt top.

It’s All About The Pink – Back

Another winter scene: Friday, after the storm – with ice pellets and freezing rain the night before – a beautiful sunny day, if cold, and the trees, shrubs, plants, grass – all sheathed in ice – a beautiful sight. This small tree made me stop and capture its image as I was leaving the pool after my morning exercise class. I tried capturing other photos but there was so much vegetation covered in ice that the images weren’t worth keeping.

Sheathed In Ice

It’s All About Pink – IV

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I haven’t worked on this quilt since Dec. 31. I’ve read 5 mystery novels, watched some interesting series on TV, added elastic to the bottom of two sweaters, continued repairing socks in the “repair socks” basket (five pairs completed, six left to do), knit a new pair of socks and close to finishing the first sock for another pair. But no sewing on this quilt.

However, yesterday, I pieced the quilt back. Today, I pinned the quilt sandwich.

It’s All About Pink – IV

Yesterday, I also set up an embroidery to fit a 150mm x 150 mm block; I still need something for the borders – I’ll probably use one of the decorative stitches for the narrow border and something related to the block design for the out border – have to do that now.

And then the quilting in the hoop will begin.

It’s All About Pink – III

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Here’s the quilt top assembled:

Quilt Top With Borders

I like how the pale narrow inner border finishes off the pieced centre. I was just lucky with the outer border – not many fabrics to choose from and at first I passed over this one, but in fact the “golden” shade within this pink brings out all the tones in the top.

Next…. Now I have to piece a 14″ strip for the backing – this top has finished at 54″ wide. For the back fabric panel I need another 14″-16″ to allow enough excess width to assemble the sandwich.

It’s All About Pink

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Just finished the 63rd block. Laid them out – first pass – to get an idea of what the whole would look like.

63 Blocks

Not bad, there’s a LOT to look at here, although one block has to be revised – I didn’t see the swastika until I looked at this image. I’ll make a replacement. I also need to array all of the blocks on the floor and walk around them for a while to make sure I’m happy with the layout – colour, shapes all reasonably distributed.

And then the big challenge – there’s not a lot of light pink batik available here in town so once I get these blocks assembled into a 7 x 9 array, I will have to go shopping for a couple of fabrics to border, back and bind the quilt. There’s nothing in my backing stash that goes with pink.

Overall, I am please with how the impact of the layout is “pink” – that was what I was aiming for. A lot of improvising has gone into this block collection – I didn’t have measurements for most of these blocks, while I worked a bit with graph paper, most of the time I started with an element and built around it. In effect each block represents a “sample” – the sort of thing I’d do to work out the dimensions of a block before using it in a quilt. Here, the sample is my end product.

Blocks 30-43

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I’m up to block 43! Just 20 to go (at least for the quilt top – I’ll probably work on more for the back – a dozen or so…)

Blocks 30-43

What’s going on here is a lot of improvisation – some “standard” blocks accompanied by a lot of using up scraps to end up with 6 1/2″ x 6 1/2″ blocks.

The challenge is having enough light pink batik – I’ve got lots of mid-range fabrics and enough dark. I’m running short of the lighter values and without the light the blocks aren’t going to work. I may have to resort to a few printed fabrics – I’ve used just two so far and am trying not to use more but I may be forced to.

The Scrap Collection

This is what my cutting table is looking like at the moment. I’ll clear it up (actually throwing out pieces that are too small or narrow to be useful) when I get back from some errands.