Bulls Eue Quilt, a Carolyn Friedlander Pattern from Savor Each Stitch. 45 x 45 inches
Here's my second second quilt made for the Proper Bostonian Quilt Guild's Summer Challenge. (See my last post for the Summer Challenge Criteria). There's a lot going on with this quilt so I'm going to blog about it today and in my post next Wednesday.
This lap size quilt didn't need to have the Pantone Color Radiant Orchid in it. It just needed to have 3-5 characteristics of Modern Quilt and be between 36 x 36 inches and 72 x 72 inches in size (not necessarily square).
I've made several quilts this summer that meet this criteria for this challenge, so I wasn't really thinking about making a lap quilt especially for the Summer Challenge. But one day, I was walking the dog and saw this coleus plant in a neighbor's front yard.
I was struck by the very pale sea foam green of the leaves accented by a deep green on the margin of the leaves and the Radiant Orchard accents in the leaves. I had fabrics matching all those colors in my stash so I decided to make a quilt using them.
I decided to use Carolyn Freidlander's Bulls-Eye pattern from her book Savor Each Stitch. I used to do a lot of hand appliqué when I first started quilting. I was in my 20s and I spent a lot of time in laundromats. The clothes spun and I appliquéd! With a few exceptions, i stopped doing hand appliqué when I finally got a washing machine!
Doing hand appliqué on this project totally changed the velocity of quilting for me. It was nice to slow down, like life in the summer, doing this hand work. Carolyn has a chapter on Techniques at the end of her book. She suggested basting 1/4 inch in from the edge of the appliqué piece and then needle turning a 1/8 inch seam and overcasting that edge. Since I was going to be appliquéing large quarter circles, the basting seemed like a perfect idea. I decided machine baste that 1/4 inch line on the longest stitch length was the way to go. It worked beautifully.
It tacked down the quarter circle piece and it gave a hard edge which helped to turn under the raw edge of the appliqué piece. I did the turning with my fingers and finger pressed them.
Detail of appliqué: White thread is the machine basting, the raw edge is turned under and the edge is being slip stitches
Carolyn said you could use the center circles in the quilt or omit them. I chose to omit them. But the scraps were so enticing that I sewed them together to make 3 circles which I appliquéd to the finished top. I like the way the eye is drawn to these accent circles.
The finished quilt meets the Modern Quilt Characteristics criteria--asymmetry in design, texture in quilting, negative space, lack of an outer border, use of bright solid colors, minimalism in design, and grid work.
Part 2: In the post on Wednesday, I'll discuss the quilting on this quilt.