Redwork

Hopefully by now you're familiar with the periodic challenges hosted by Quilt Improv Studio. I have participated in two previously, making Utterly Blue for the Blue Repetition Challenge and Bow Ties No. 1 for the Black and White Challenge. And now my newly completed Redwork is my response to the current Monochrome Dreams Challenge, which runs July 1st – October 15th, 2021. 

Of course I debated a while over which color to use, finally settling on red, or rather redS. I've grown to love the mix of various reds over the last couple of years, so I was eager to revisit them. I had quite a few in my stash, including Kona red, rich red, wine, brick, crimson, Chinese red, cardinal, lipstick, and ruby. 

I started by taping off a 24" blue painter's tape square on my design wall and filling it with shapes. I started with various sized rectangles, then somewhere along the line I created some triangles, a few HRTs, and some stripes. At the point shown in the photo below, I was confident enough to begin sewing pieces together, while knowing that I still needed to build out some, as the minimum size for the challenge was 24" square. Still, I liked where it was going.

So you can see in this next photo (below), that most of the build out happened on the right side and along the bottom. I ended up incorporating more triangles as I pieced, as well as more of the other elements. The top, when complete, measured 26.5" square. 

When I shared the blue tape photo on Instagram, Latifah Saafir commented that she loved the contrast of the reds with the blue. I totally agreed, and chose to combine the two for the quilt's back. I included both a solid (Kona Harbour) and a blue print, as both were such great matches for 'painter's-tape blue.' You can see I also had just a few small leftover striped bits that I was able to incorporate. Quilt backs aren't usually my favorites to piece, but this one was totally fun.

For quilting, I used two red threads, Aurifil 50wt #2250 [Red] and #1103 [Burgundy] and once again used the Fancy Straight Line from Jacquie Gering's WALK book. It just goes so nicely with this kind of improv, and provides awesome texture, though I think this is the smallest scale I've done it. The finished, trimmed quilt measured 25" square.

It was difficult to get a good shot of the quilting once that was underway. I tried both indoors and out, and I couldn't get the colors to show true. Thankfully a follower reminded me to try putting a white sheet of paper in the photo and then crop the photo afterwards. That definitely helped. The photo below was actually taken indoors on a big sheet of white foam board near my best light source. The first photo in this post was taken outdoors on a pretty cloudy day, so you can see there's a difference no matter what I did.

Here's a closer look at the quilting. Between the palette, the improv, the smallish-size, and that quilting, this project was truly enjoyable; and being my first finish in weeks, felt delightfully good.

So there's still time if you're interested in joining the Monochrome Dreams Challenge. And if you want to see more of what folks are creating, just check out the hashtags #qismonochrome and #quiltimprovstudio.

Linking up with Meadow Mist Designs' Favorite Finish Linkup!