A finish: #1.22

As mentioned, I have a couple of finishes saved up to share.  Here is the first one. 

I seem to be getting much better at moving things through the system, since this is barely two years from start to finish.  This is, admittedly, because there are a couple of tops I seem to have pretty much decided never to quilt, but if I don't feel it when I sort through the piles, I don't see the point in giving months of my time over to working on something.

This is a simple little quilt really, but for some reason it is really ticking the boxes for me right now and has gone onto my bed as a result.  I think the orange has something to do with it, plus those strips of my once-favourite green trousers and the lovely blue plaid shirt with the deep, deep blue stripes. The Indonesian batik fabric that is in the checkerboard bits posed some problems when I was piecing. It was so busy and unusual that I couldn't find a way to balance it with other fabrics for a while, but I am happy with how it worked out in the end. It sits well, I think, with the dark blues and the other orange/red areas help too.

I started this on the 20th January 2022 and finished piecing on 31st March, so that's as close to exactly two years as makes no difference.  It is pieced with shirts, plus the green trousers scraps (most of this went into this top) and some orange Oakshott fabric that I have had for years.  I looked hard for a shirting that would do the job for me, but nothing worked and this lovely orange seemed right at home.

The backing is some of the duvet cover that you can see in this quilt top and I used a different part of said cover for the binding as well.  

The wadding is organic cotton and it is quilted with perle cotton. As usual I used what I had rather than buying in specially, though this will be the last time I can do that without at least one or two new purchases.  I echoed the flying geese in the centre in some areas of the quilting, just to make a change from straight lines. and am quite pleased with how it worked out.  

The finished piece is around 65 inches in all directions, give or take.

 

The rules, roughly speaking, are as follows...

No sooner do I think I know my mind than things change.  Those triangles, which didn't look at all right down at the bottom, were somehow the best fit when I came to working the next row across the top.  Go figure.  

The sharp-eyed amongst you will notice that although this is now, broadly speaking, a medallion quilt, I am not being entirely consistent about working in rounds.  More a 'mostly medallion' quilt, I guess.  

I have been thinking about trying to articulate the 'rules' that I feel emerge as I piece.  It's not entirely easy, since I seldom think them through, but looking at this I can see that, loosely, I am not putting two sets of wedges side-by-side, or two long runs of plain strip (except where there are coping strips).  The black fabric is only being paired with orange, and most strips are cut so that they run vertically.  There is probably at least one exception to each of these, but I did say they were loose rules.