Rich Red I

If you caught my recent post about supplementing my solid stash, you may remember a suggestion from my friend, Dionne - to buy a lot of one color and use it in each future project - for as long as that felt like a good idea, of course. And that came to me as I was trying to decide what to do with the yellow scraps I had left from a project late last year.

I'd been glancing through A Common Thread: A Collection of Quilts by Gwen Marston, and when I happened upon her series of Red Square quilts, I knew I was on to something. I promptly began piecing blocks in the spirit of Red Square IV, which Gwen made in 2008. And in doing so, I'm considering this quilt the first in a series of sorts, where I use Kona Rich Red.

I made single blocks, as well as strings of them, first just placing them randomly on the design wall; then filling in or adding on with scraps and fabrics from stash as I built the quilt top.

For a quilt back, I pieced one leftover block with a variety of small pieces from stash. That blue plaid on the right doesn't obviously coordinate with the front of the quilt, but it certainly did with that floral, which decidedly did. Gwen was whispering in my mind, "Just have fun and try things," and that made everything fit.

For quilting, I used Aurifil 50wt #1103 [burgandy] to stitch an 'X' through the center of each red square. with a frame in the larger squares. Then with variegated 50wt #4658 [Limoni Di Monterosso - side note, I have actually been to Monterosso! Good memories!] I quilted squared coils around each red square, with quilting lines no more than 1/2" to 3/4" apart. There was a variety of other patterns used to fill in as needed - all with my walking foot, and totally improvisational.

It was a little tricky squaring this one up, and I confess I had to pull out my laser levels among other tricks of the trade, before I was satisfied. Bound in Kona Grellow, the quilt finished at 43" x 53". Quilted relatively loosely, this one turned out very cozy, which is never a bad thing, now is it?

So we'll see how using Rich Red in subsequent quilts works out! If you've ever done a color-based series, please do share with us in the comments.

Linking up with TGIFF with Sarah Goer Quilts and Meadow Mist Designs' Favorite Finish Monthly Linkup.