The Whole Watermelon

Last week I showed a "slice" of my solids swap quilt, and now I can show the whole thing. While I finished it a few days ago, the weather has been most uncooperative for getting decent pictures. But I finally found a door that receives enough light on a grey, rainy day to snap a few photos.

After I created the improv quilt, I opted to add a little more wonkiness via circles. Dan's quilt definitely provided the inspiration, though in the spirit of improv + wonky, I wanted the circles to be not quite a perfect 360. Luckily, that was pretty easy to achieve! The innermost circle consists of alternating strips of my partner's favorite colors.

To balance the pieced circles, I also quilted in circles. This might be my new favorite quilting design, and a cardboard circle template was my best tool: I cut out a circle (after tracing a glass onto a piece of cardboard) and taped the cardboard onto the quilt sandwich. Then I placed my presser foot against the cardboard and basically "traced" the circle while stitching. After that, I moved outward at regular intervals and continued to use the previous circle as my guide.

The back -- which again uses my partner's favorite colors -- shows off the circle quilting really well. The empty circle in the middle will become the label, but I didn't want to write my partner's name before taking pictures.

This palette is not my regular go-to sort of color scheme, but I'm confident my partner will be happy with it, and it's fun to play with colors that I don't usually use.

The black binding was not originally planned, but once I used it in the pieced circle, I knew it was the perfect way to frame the mini-quilt. I'm really happy with how it works as the binding; it stands out from the rest of the quilt and creates a clear border. I think it helps focus the improv/wonky piecing in a visually pleasing sort of way. I'll send this mini-quilt, the pouch, and some other little goodies off to my partner tomorrow.