Scrappy Finish

It's done!!! Done done done. I started working on this quilt back in January and it's been a long process with lots of updates along the way. I could have declared the blocks finished back in April, but decided to make just a few more (and I'm glad I did). After that it was basting the quilt, which I hated - my sore back and knees didn't thank me. Then there were the hours upon hours of hand quilting to make the cross hatch pattern. Then this past week I put the last few stitches in the binding and now it is done. And somewhere along the way I discovered a camera. (Next time I promise I'll give better update pictures, really.)

This quilt is seven months of my life. Zoning out and sewing on weekends and days off. Sewing a good hour each and every night while watching crappy tv and snuggling with Bunny. And each and every last stitch is done. You'll have to excuse all the pictures, I'm rather proud of it.

It's not as "scrappy" as some Scrappy Trips. It's made all with one fabric line (that I got at Walmart, so I'm a little short on details) - two jelly rolls and four fat quarters. Because it's not a line of quilting cottons specifically some of the fabrics (particularly the fat quarters) come at different thicknesses. The fabric doesn't have the give and glide of a quilting cotton, but I still have a companion quilt planned, featuring log cabins.

This is a fun pattern to work with, and because of the strip piecing it's perfectly suited to my style of quilting involving hand piecing, Doctor Who and maybe a glass of wine and I'm sure that once I find myself with a sizeable scrap pile I'll revisit this pattern in a true scrappy fashion. It's also a great beginner pattern, and helped me build up a lot of confidence.

Because I used the same 14 fabrics over and over in this quilt I wanted each square to lead into the next. The way I've achieved that is living up matching fabrics in separate blocks to create a more continuous movement. Colour placement on the blocks themselves was fairly simple as I gave each block I worked on a "theme" whether it was to be mostly one colour (like the green block in the bottom right) or to be mostly bright fabrics and it came together quite well into a cohesive whole.  Also, there is a my side and a Bunny's side on this. I'm picky like that.

The sunlight in this one makes the colours look a little deceptive, but you get the best view of the texture. I cross hatched the quilting here, going through each square on a diagonal in both ways.

Every single stitch of this baby was sewn by hand. I made Bunny buy me a cake when I finished. A hand made quilt deserves a cake, no?