Quilt Finish: Perfect Storm

A quilt starts with inspiration.  And I had only the best - Rossie's Double Plus Good.  It's the quilt that hooked me into the modern movement years ago.  At a Chicago MQO retreat in 2012, sitting across from Mary P, I began to work on wonky crosses just strips of brights against some Kona snow.  I even joined these blocks, only to decide I didn't care for the effect.  So I put it away. 

Meanwhile, I have been accumulating scraps of wool batting left over from various projects and bits of a wonderful Windham backing - it's a wonderful texture thing.  And it dawned on me I could join 4 of these little 8" blocks and make a 15.5" block and that perhaps some handwork would perk these blocks up.  So I began to play and came up with this:

 I had 14 of these blocks and above all wanted to make something useable.  So these blocks became the outer border for 6 additional blocks with no piecing, just handwork.  Like this:

Part of this perfect storm is that I finished the handwork on my sister-in-law Chris's quilt and needed something to stitch.  So these middle circles were just the thing.

I knew all along that I would use Sharon Pederson's reversible technique to join these 20 blocks.  But then of course the dilemma is what fabrics to use.  And that's when my QuiltCon 2018 shoppers - Holly and Sarah - come in.  They bought for me a panel of Yoshiko Jinzenji fabrics, and I instantly knew that it needed to be used for this quilt.  Here's a picture of this panel. 

Here it is:  60" x 75"

Center Detail

detail from the back

I'm so in love with this.  I'm currently machine-quilting a quilt I made for a fund-raiser.  I have invested time and money into this quilt, but I just don't like it.  About that quilt I am saying, "Someone's gonna love it - it's just not gonna be me."  And for this quilt?  I know not everyone will love this quilt, but I sure do.  It's staying in this house!

A quick shout-out to my quilty peeps who are retreating in Racine this weekend - heeeeeeey!  In honor of this retreat I am keeping retreat hours this weekend (which means sewing as soon as I get up).  We're getting ready to leave town, and too many things need to get wrapped up.  Peace out!