Welcome to day three of the Shades of Blue Sew It - Show it Challenge.
Hosted by Carla of Creatin' in the Sticks.
This Bargello quilt was planned and in progress and then I halted everything to make the pink one for Project Quilting week 2. This blue one was going together so quick, and I had just received the perfect pink precut in my Island Batik Ambassador box, so I decided to pause this and make a smaller pink version. After the pink one was finished I got back to this one and finished it up in time to show off today.
I definitely have a lot of blue fabric, from yardage to scraps. It seems to be every where, you'd think I'd have more red, since that is my favorite color, but nope, blue takes the prize around here. The challenge for me was what pile of blue to tackle: the string bin, the larger scrap bin, yardage, or precuts.
This precut was nice because it had two of every print. That made it easy for me to make two identical strip panels. I picked a nice layout, sewed all the strips side by side, and then sewed up the last seam to make a tube. I labeled one A and the other B. All the "A" seams were pressed one way and the "B" seams were pressed the opposite way. That way all my seams would nest perfectly together when sewing the columns together. I did this with the goal to avoid pinning.
The tubes were really big, so I had to fold them in half to cut my strips. I was a little worried that things would get wonky that way, but it turned out great.
I designed the quilt to use the entire strip set with minimal fabric left over. I didn't' want to have a wide scrappy strip set left over and not know what to do with it. I did give myself a few inches in my calculations in case I cut something wrong. It turned out great. These two pieces are all I had left, which isn't too bad and they can be easily taken apart and put in the scrap bins.
I was able to avoid pins for the most part, but I must have wiggled the ruler on one of the white prints when I cut it. For some reason that row was a wee bit bigger than it needed to be. Pinning and fudging was needed for that part. It turned out ok in the end though because you can't even tell.
This quilt is 80 inches long. When I designed it was thinking about using 2 full strip sets, I wanted 40 neutral strips to go with the 40 blue strips. I ended up taking out two neutrals, but then added a skinny border so I was back at 80 inches. If I use yardage again in the future I can take out some of the white rows to make it a little shorter. The width came out to be 67 inches. So it is 13 inches longer than it is wide.
I even used up some of my blue stash for the backing.
For the quilting, I picked particular prints and followed those up and down with a squiggly line.
I based the feathers and swirls off those lines.
I used Hobbs Premium Cotton batting on the inside. A queen size bag was the perfect length.
I was going to quilt the white areas with white thread and the blue areas with dark blue thread, but I was out of white, so I went with a pastel blue for the whole thing. Turned out to be a good choice.
Now its time for quilt picture overload. lol!
If I got off track with the quilting I just threw in an extra swirl and got back on track.
The sun sure shows off the quilting!
I was watching the live version of Beauty and the beast while quilting this one up, so when I look at it I start singing, "There goes the baker with his tray like always...."
Quilting looks lovely on the back too.
Makes me think of the Ocean just a little.
I also played around in EQ8 and made a mock up using the the new Island Batik line coming out in February called Double Dutch by Kathy Engle for Sarah Fabian of Quilt Basket. I also put in some of the Island Batik Basic Neutrals. This version has a nice denim feel to me.
Make sure to visit all the other blogs to see even more blue projects!
Happy Quilting!
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