Sun-Dappled

I showed a few peeks of this quilt a couple weeks ago, and it's now done and has been delivered to its new home in Chicago. The sun was not the most cooperative when I took pictures, and I managed to unintentionally delete my favorite image while editing, but such is life. This quilt served as an experiment with equilateral triangles, linen, random selection, and chopping up large prints.

I pieced a print triangle to a linen triangle, pressed them, and tossed them into a grocery bag. I then sewed rows together by plucking out a parallelogram from the bag and attaching it to the row. When the rows were complete, I tossed them in the bag and plucked a couple out at a time to sew together. I wanted to make it truly random, such that repeats were okay and created visual interest. The mirror placement arose from this randomness as I hadn't realized that I wasn't sewing all the rows together in the exact same way. This layout let me use all the rows without ripping or chopping off ends to make them match. Design by mistake works for me.

I used prints from Laura Gunn's Poppy collection. I needed to make a gender neutral quilt and decided that the deep orange and range of blues would serve that purpose. And I don't consider flowers and leaves "girly"; it was a male roommate of mine who, years ago, showed me the brilliance of buying flowers just because, to brighten up space, and because the local flower lady was super nice. In the end, this went to Orly Erin, but I would be just as comfortable giving it to a boy. When I started cutting into the fabric, I wasn't sure how they would work out, since most of them are large prints that probably work best as backings. But I think it's really cool to see them in pieces as well. For example, the blue and orange triangle at the bottom of the picture is the center of a flower, but you'd never know it in its current state. In that sense, large prints can be quite multidimensional.

I did use a large piece of the painted vines for the back. As much as I think the vine pieces are cool, I really love the large section of it. The quilting is tough to see (that darn sun!) but I quilted straight lines 1/4" offset of the triangle diagonals, leaving the horizontal space unquilted and thereby creating a diamond pattern (a little easier to see in the close-up above).

Choosing a binding was a little difficult. Originally I thought I'd use a solid navy, but the solid seemed too stark against the watercolor-like prints. I played with a few prints from my stash but ultimately decided to use the Dogwood Stripe in Denim. I considered using the Spice version, which is also in the quilt front, but I wanted more blue. Because blue is awesome.