02 June, 2009

Luck Be a Pink Hat

This one has been a long time coming.  I had the top finished, and the back too, over a year and a half ago.  I managed to get it to the long armers shortly before or after Smilosaurus was born, I can't remember.  And it sat for nearly a year once I picked it up.  I simply had no motivation to get the binding on.  It's not like I dislike the quilt, I quite love the boldness of it all, I was simply lazy and didn't want to sew on a binding.

The motivation to finish it came because I entered it in the show over the weekend.  Nothing like a deadline to get your butt in gear!  So I found the perfect fabric, braved the bias cut, and got it done.

The center portion of the quilt is from a book called Strip Pieced Quilts by Maikke Baker.  I was at a retreat with some quilting friends in my Red Hat group, The Garnet Gals.  Yes, I know I am way too young for a red hat, but these great ladies welcomed me in and still share lots of life and quilt experience with me.  We decided to sew one afternoon and put this together from stash.  And we all liked it too much to donate it - bad us! - so we drew straws to see who got it. I won!

The borders were pieced from scraps, yet another black and white fabric, and more circles.  If you look closely in the bottom photo you will see that the purple we used had coloured circles scattered across the purple.  That's where the colour of my circles came from.

This is one of my favourite backs ever.  So simple, yet really bold.  My initial plan was to put the label in a circle in the green, but I couldn't print a small enough, yet still legible label for any kind of border on it. It still works.

It now seems that the girls can't keep their hands off any aspect of my hobby, er... obsession.  It was impossible to get a shot of this quilt without them in it.

I had this one professionally quilted by a local lady, Berny Sproule.  She used a purple thread in a swooping meander pattern to bring it all together.  

Now, don't get too googly-eyes staring at the photo!

6 comments:

Sunshine said...

Wow, the quilt looks huge next to your little one! In the first photo, I didn't notice the legs and hands sticking out around the quilt and thought it was crib sized :)

Very neat design, and amazing how the layout of the same blocks makes this quilt so dynamic.

Very nice!

Cheers,
Christine

Twisted Quilts said...

The black and white is very dramatic. I makes a very interesting design. I always think I want to work with black and white but get side tracked. Precious kids!!

Unknown said...

Great finish! I love that you had a bunch of ladies in on the top :) Your girls are too cute to leave out of the pictures :)

Amanda Jean said...

lucky you to win the quilt! i love boldness the back...and it's great that your girls are in the photo...it helps us get a perspective of just how big the quilt is. nice finish, cheryl!

brown robin said...

Wow... and here I thought you were an office slave now. You MUST be burning some midnight oil. As usual, I love your work. My favorite aspects of your recent work is the triangle improv.... I love what you do with color, white, and shapes. I also LOVE that quilt backing on the B&W. How inspired! Keep up the amazing work. I bet you got some praise at the show.

Victoria said...

wonderful and unique!
and your little helpers are cute as can be!