For those who don’t know, do.Good Stitches is an online quilting bee, with many different “circles” around the world. We make quilts & donate them to various organizations. Within each circle, composed of 8 – 12 people, there are “quilters” & “stitchers”. A quilter decides the block, color palette, size of blocks, etc. for each month they are assigned to, the rest of the members make the blocks & mail them to the quilters to put together, quilt, & send off to the appropriate organization. We use Flickr & Instagram to stay in touch, ask questions, & post pictures. This is the 2nd circle I have been a member of (the first one was dissolved for various reasons) & I really enjoy it!
July was my month to plan the quilt and even though I am a bit tardy with this quilt, I think it turned out wonderful! It measures 67″ x 65.5″.
The block is a french braid & the inspiration for the color palette was from this picture. I really enjoy seeing all the different color combinations that are presented here, yet they still are harmonious. One of the members (I can’t remember who!) sent along more strips with their blocks, which I incorporated into the border. Since there is so much color and movement going on within the quilt, I wanted the border fabric to fade into the background, so to speak. So I decided on a solid dark grey & I think it highlights the various colors quite nicely!
The layout you see is not actually the one that I had laid out, for I had them alternating in the same direction, as the center & right quadrant does. I had inadvertently switched around the left side when I was sewing it altogether & I didn’t realize this until the top was done. Whoops! Oh well, I think it adds a bit of random to it.
For the back, I simply found coordinating pieces in my stash. You can’t tell it from this picture, but the orange has a golden glitter in it that shimmers nicely in the light. My husband thinks I’m crazy for using multiple pieces instead of one piece. However, he also thinks I’m crazy for cutting up perfectly good fabric into smaller pieces, then sewing them back together. Besides, I have never claimed to be otherwise…
With all the seams & angles going on in this quilt, I wanted to keep the quilting simple. Concentric circles was a good solution for minimized quilting, as well as giving the impression of ripples in the water, where tight rings are in the center & as the water moves outward, the ripples get wider & wider apart. At least, that’s what I was trying to accomplish…
For the binding, I used a mixture of dark purple on the corners of the striped borders & the remaining extra strips on the corners of the grey portion.
My daughter Grace is studying photography in school, so I asked her to take these photos at our new house (which is still in the building phase). Didn’t she do great job?!
