Quilt of Many Squares

Orange, turquoise, mauve, black, coral, lime, blue, olive, gray, tan...

The fabric was purchased with plans for a quilt for my sister, but the longer it sat around in my sewing room the less likely it was that she would get the finished product. The pattern is from one of Kaffe Fassett's books and I made a smaller version of it once before for a baby quilt that I gifted years ago. I remembered how small some of the pieces were on this quilt and how much time went into its construction--that convinced me that I wanted one of my own to keep. Most of the fabric is from a jelly roll that I purchased and I think there are scraps from only three or four non-roll fabrics incorporated. This is unusual for me, I like to put as many fabrics as possible into any quilt and the more scraps the better. Since these were not colors and patterns I have worked with before though, I really didn't have scraps laying around to expand the tableau. All of the piecing was done on my Necchi Supernova.  So many seams, but it went together smoothly.

I started by making the larger squares first. I really didn't know if I had enough fabric and I didn't want to be piecing strips for the longer square sides. Tally marks were used to keep track of the finished squares pile.

Kaffe Fassett's name misspelled in my notes, I corrected it after this picture

Once all of the square were completed, I started building the quilt out from the middle.  In his book, Kaffe details how to work from the center out by adding a row or column and working counter-clockwise.

A couple segments in

Row added to the top

Left side and bottom completed

Wouldn't you know it, even with my careful tallying, I still ended up with an extra block.  I ended up embroidering the year on it and then using it as part of the pieced backing. After much deliberation, I chose a basketweave pattern for the quilting. It required a lot of starting and stopping and changing direction, but I used my Pfaff 131 and I absolutely love working on that machine.

For the binding I was hoping for a solid, but I had nothing suitable in my fabric stash. I checked mom's stash as well and surprisingly, she didn't have anything I wanted either. So, back to the fabric store. :)  There I found a fantastic orange and only needed 1/3 yd for the entire binding. Of course, while searching for orange, several other fabrics fairly jumped off the shelves into my open arms.  They needed a good home and I happily adopted them. What project will I use them in?

Some orange and a new project...

I sewed the binding on by machine and then finished the back by hand.

Lainie watched the hand stitching very closely

I use these clips for all types of projects, but they're particularly handy at holding binding

I had this partial spool of old thread sitting around, perfect color match, but would there be enough of it?

I finished the binding with about 3 inches of thread left to tie off. 

The sleeve on the back was a scrap and that was basted on by hand as well.

Here is a view of the back of the quilt. Backing was pieced from scraps and one leftover block.  I love how the quilting looks from this side.

It took awhile, but I did find the perfect quilting pattern

Here is a trial run of the quilt hanging in its new spot. It had not been washed yet and the quilting does not show up very well.

Our walls are cinderblock and there is no picture rail here, so a curtain rod is employed

Spotlight highlights the bright colors, patterns, and quilting equally

The can light was already in place before the quilt got hung, but I have to say I'm pretty impressed with how it's centered. It almost looks like it's hanging in a gallery, right? I love how this turned out, every time I look at it I notice something new. Color, pattern, movement... a visual feast.