Orient Express

Here's my second weekend accomplishment!

I'm happy that this big quilt is finished! This is only the third large quilt I've completed, and it's definitely a different feeling of accomplishment than when I finish a baby quilt.


Since the quilt design reminded me of a stained glass window from the start, I decided to fit the quilting to that theme. I quilted about 1/4" from the two seams inside each black sashing line.


On the "windows", I quilted random straight and bent lines as I did on a larger scale on the bentobox wedding quilt. It has a neat effect and kept quilt turning to a minimum. Win-win!



Here's a sneak-peak of the back:
I like the binding, though the diagonal lines got lost in the busy pattern - I guess I could have saved myself the work of making bias-strip binding...
Now, a funny thing happened when I turned the quilt over for a photo of the back. I actually like it much better! (Ignore the washed-out photo - the remnants of hurricane Danny left me with a grey dull day for photographing...)
If this quilt stays with me, I'd leave the back up, the front is so busy! :)

Now the question is - what do I do with this quilt????

UFO Progress

Right after I posted my to do list, I got down to business and started basting. I finished the backing for the character quilt, here's the wrong side of it, taped down for layering.


As soon as I was done that, I got out the oriental quilt and basted it, here it is all done:


And after all this, my poor fingers, especially my thumb, looked like this:


Thanks to that blister, I first tried pinning with my left, and eventually just did some awkward contortions with my fingers to avoid that same spot and got it done :)

I finished basic quilting on the oriental quilt the following day: about a 1/4" on the inside of all the sashing, and I'm proud to report that after some pulling and tightening while quilting, there are no folds on the front or back, what a feat... a reason why I usually don't like intersecting lines!

Oriental Quilt (Wonky Log Cabin Panels) Part 1

This quilt began with a fabric sale. I couldn't say no to 3$/m, so I bought 0.5 to 1m of these fabrics:


I then started to turn them into a wonky log cabin inspired by the County Fair quilt from MelanieMade (she has an awesome quilt blog, by the way!). So I happily sewed away, adding strips of all sizes, and trying to get some lopsided blocks, which I really like.

In the end, I had these 30 blocks (that's when I got really tired of log cabins), and they didn't turn out at all as I had envisioned - the fabrics were much too busy to put the blocks next to each other. It just didn't pop.

So I tried a few different fabrics as sashing, and eventually settled on simple black (on for 3.33$/m, would you say that's luck, or what?). I also tried to decide whether to put fence post corners in or not; took some photos to help me decide:


One of my teachers had suggested the corner squares when I asked her about cutting the material lengthwise, i.e. parallel to the selvedge, is that with the bias or against? I can never keep this apart...

As you can see, I decided against the fence post corners, cut lengthwise and it worked beautifully.


I put a broader black border around it, and now doesn't it pop?


I was inspired by CrazyMom to add a little detail on the back to tie the two sides together. She does this on every quilt as far as I can see, at least I don't remember seeing a single solid, one-fabric backing on her (also awesome) blog. (the weird spots on the first picture are dust on the lens or in the air, because the fabric looks just black to the eye, no spots)


Here's the binding fabric, I cut it diagonally, which was a pain and a lot of joining, but I still got enough out of 0.5m and it's redy to go whenever I have the energy to pin the quilt - a task I despise.

I started working on this quilt in January, and I think it took me about 2 weeks to get to this stage. It's definitely been a feel-good process so far!