Monday, July 1, 2013

Going back in time!

It's been a while! There's been a broken laptop, a trip to England, and another broken laptop (now fixed!) since my last post. But you haven't missed much; very little sewing or embroidery has taken place since I last wrote. I did make some fabulous acquisitions from Liberty on vacation (I could have spent my entire savings in there), but I'm still figuring out what to do with it all.

However, I still need to catch up with writing about my finished projects. Hop in my time machine (or TARDIS, if you will) and we'll travel back a year...

It was summer 2012, very sticky and steamy. Sometime in August, I began working on a 30th birthday quilt for Drea, one of my best friends. She and her husband had just bought their first house and they painted their living room walls mint green to coordinate with the previous residents' unusual choice of carpeting. It instantly reminded me of  an Amy Butler print

So, the soft green fabrics in Amy Butler's Daisy Chain and Midwest Modern  / Midwest Modern 2 lines became the foundation of the quilt. I chose a few Joel Dewberry patterns from the Heirloom collection to fill it out and Lizzy House's Jewels for the small pieces. I had a difficult time finding a backing fabric in a similar colorway that wasn't too pricey. I ended up using a coupon and ordering a cute green floral print from Joann.  (I used the extra to make the oven mitts in the previous post!)

I worked from the Lattice Quilt pattern by Amy Smart. It was definitely the most complex pattern I've done! After cutting the squares and triangles, I laid everything out to make sure the fabrics looked good together:



Then I cut all the sashing. There was lots and lots of sashing! For this pattern, you have to piece together each row on the diagonal and then sew on the triangle corners. I kept forgetting which way the triangles pointed and had to break out the seam ripper a few times. The tiny squares kept getting lost in the shuffle, too. I opted to omit the extra border in the pattern, since the quilt was plenty big for a lap quilt. I shadow-quilted the diagonal lines and bound it in a light green.

I finished the quilt about 2 months after Drea's birthday, but she knew it was coming! I ended up dropping it off a few hours before Hurricane Sandy hit, so she was able to use it during the storm. Unfortunately, all of the pictures I took of the quilt after I finished it were casualties of my crashed laptop. Drea sent this one along, though:



Perhaps I'll pester her to take some more the next time I'm at her house. :)

UPDATE: Some more pictures!