Thursday, October 27, 2016

Off the Cuff

It was weeks ago when I agreed to make a quilted wall hanging for a friend's auction, so it was silly to wait till the week it was needed to get started. But that's what went down, basically because I couldn't decide what to do!


Rummaging through my solids scrap bin for bee blocks the other day, I unearthed some leftover Improv Under the Influence strips from my class with Krista Hennebury last year. [Here's my original project.]  I found a yard of Essex Linen in Graphite in my stash, and the ingredients were sorted out.

As you can see in the top photo, my design wasn't earth-shattering, but I figured I could spice things up a notch with some improv quilting, echoing the shapes in the strips. Most of the quilting was done in Aurifil 50wt #5004 (Grey Smoke), but I did a ghost strip in #2140 (mustard), then did the same quilting in the colored strips themselves. This was fun quilting! 


In the areas without a colored strip or ghost quilting, I stuck with straight-line, in 3/8" increments. Sadly, the ghost strip isn't that noticeable in the finished quilt - a good reason to try some thicker thread for accent quilting like this. Note to self!



Of course there was one strip that called out for some matched-binding, and why not?


Finishing at 34 x 42", I'm not quite sure this little quilt has a style that will most appeal to the auction crowd, but I managed to create it from stash and had fun making it up as I went, which was a good deal for me.

9 comments:

  1. It's larger than I expected when you said "mini quilt" and I hope it speaks to someone at the auction. I really love the stark color contrast and matched binding.

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  2. It's a great quilt, and it's good to know how much you learned from creating it. And my, don't you have the gift for naming a quilt! "Off the Cuff" suits it to a T.

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  3. it's great! I hope it raises lots at the auction.

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  4. Just right - love the play of the yellow.

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  5. The matched binding is the perfect finish!

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  6. Very striking and eye-catching! Love the quilting you did!

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  7. I really like this and the quilting is so much fun! I hope it finds a good home at the auction!

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  8. Looks great! Love the quilting!! and of course there's some matched binding. Ha! Love it!

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