Rocketship

This one is a longtime time coming. It started as a honeybun and became a rocketship over many many months. At first I thought I would make a huge chevron sort of thing or maybe some dramatic diagonals. I didn't really have a plan, just a desire to make a baby quilt and use this Hello Betty honeybun that, frankly, was shedding the edges of its 1.5" strips all over my other fabric.

That Y-seam provided an unexpected learning opportunity. Which is to say, I had never sewn such a seam before and thought it quite intimidating. (This is, of course, the result of not planning out the quilt ahead of time, because that Y-seam is actually quite avoidable, but I digress). Luckily, the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild is full of really smart sewers and kind teachers; Ginia very patiently helped me figure this out. Because when you're going to sew a Y-seam for the first time, it's not actually advisable to do one with huge pieces of fabric and lots of bias edges. But challenges: I like them? I like them.

I started quilting with the 1/4" echo quilting. It was great for stabilizing the quilt. However, if I'm being honest, it also became tedious and tiresome rather fast. After 4 hours, I needed a new plan, because I did want to finish this quilt. Hence the stippling which, as home quilting goes, is usually quick (relatively) and manageable. In hindsight, I think some flame quilting in the negative space (Kona natural) would have been cool but since I just thought of that now, it was not meant to be.

Bound with more Kona natural and sent to California: rocketship is out and about.