Pillars

This month of Block Studies Collective with Tara Faughnan @tarafaughnan felt a bit disjointed, interrupted my some mid-month travel. The prompt was Pillars, with the encouragement to hand-piece, so I opted to go that route for the blocks at least. My fabrics were a mix of Tara's suggested palette and colors from my stash - Konas Sienna, Geranium, Lupine, Thistle, Grapemist, Blueprint, Blue Jay, Teal Blue, Pool, Aruba, Key Lime, and Summer Pear.

The blocks were basically stripes with optional 'caps' top and bottom.

Though I began with a thicker thread (what was I thinking?), I switched pretty quickly to Aurifil 80wt, which was very nice for hand-piecing.

The quilt backing was also pieced, using my scraps to simulate a block from the front.

The only truly disappointing part of this project was the batting scrap I used, which was a little too puffy for my liking. But I survived, and I enjoyed the quilting more once I gave it all a press mid-stream.

For quilting, I used a variegated Wonderfil Fruitti FT16 [Grapes], which complimented the colors in the quilt nicely, I thought. Plus, it's a dream to stitch with. 

With a running stitched binding in Kona Geranium, the little quilt finished at about 13" square.

One thing I did with the quilting that was quite unusual for me, was to leave all the knots from my quilting threads showing on the surface, with both the quilt front and the binding on the back. For some reason, I thought that suited this piece, and it was indeed, very freeing to do.