Split Segments

I've thoroughly enjoyed sewing through my scrap baskets the last several weeks, and that's exactly where this latest quilt started too. You may remember my Summer Sampler from last year.... well it had an awesome circle layout that just happened to result in a good-sized pile of dark blue off-cuts, and they were the beginning of Split Segments.

I began with pairing each blue piece with a lighter scrap, and tried a few different iterations of using those pairings before I came up with one I liked well enough to continue. Basically, in the end, each pair was cut in 'half' and then mixed up and pieced into four-patches. Even then, I wasn't sure, but what did I have to lose?

I kept going until the blue segments were gone, ending up with 25 blocks, which I squared to 5 1/2". I rummaged through those scraps again to see what I could use to tie them together, and settled on some oranges and red, which I used to 'frame' the center blocks before adding the final round.

It still felt like it needed a little something, and I decided rather than a border, a nice wide binding of gray Essex linen would be good. But unfortunately that wasn't to be, as after quilting, I inadvertently cut off the extra batting I'd carefully measured and preserved, and that, as they say, was that. Darn.

The backing was made with a mix of scraps and small stash pieces, plus one lone 'test block'.... a real modge podge. Quilting was a curved 1" grid done in a perfect light blue grey thread [Aurifil 50wt #2610], which somehow was a nice compromise between a dark blue thread to match the original segments, and a light gray that would have been nice with the lighter scraps. I actually originally planned to go back and quilt the grid more densely, but really, the 1" seemed to suit the design well without overpowering it.

And since my original plan with the chunky binding had been foiled, I put away that gray Essex and went back to my scrap basket to see what I could find for a binding. And what do you know but I found a long-enough length of leftover binding from another project in a pretty blue shot-cotton. Not a perfect match, but at this point it really didn't nor shouldn't have been. I sewed it right on and called it done.

The final quilt measures 25 1/2" square and I'll admit, though I was really tempted to toss those original blue "scraps" after finishing last year's sampler, I'm glad I saved them and challenged myself to use them. A tad disappointed about my blunder near the end, but the project was otherwise enjoyable and though I struggled for a while with where to go with it, I'm quite fond with the finish. All's good.