A Quilter's Table: Road Trip

Friday, January 10, 2020

Summer Sampler Sequel

So it's taken me a while to pick up my Summer Sampler blocks and continue on to the setting blocks. The quiltalong had a stunning layout included in the pattern and it's part of what drew me in.

For those blocks, I continued with Kona Shadow, which I'd used in many of my blocks, along with Kona Storm, a really deep blue. And honestly, it took alot of hours to get to this point. Templates and curves and pressing, oh my. I wish I could say I was 100% happy with my work, and in this photo it doesn't look half bad! But up close, those points and circles leave alot to be desired.

But! I've gotten this far, and now it's on to making a big ole quilt back. Even though a wide-back sounds easy(!), I think I'll use all of my extra fabric and start in on piecing one. I sure hope to be quilting before long!

Monday, January 28, 2019

Summer Road Trip

After sharing my Homage quilt finish just a couple of weeks ago, it's almost inconceivable that I have another long-term finish to show already, but it's true! About the time I started in on quilting Homage, I sent my Summer Sampler quilt top off to be long-arm quilted. Wasn't that clever of me?

The Summer Sampler Road Trip hosted by Lee/Freshly Pieced, Faith/Fresh Lemons Quilts, and Katie/Swim Bike Quilt was announced back in April of last year, but the sewalong didn't actually start until mid-May, and then we sewed through September. [See links to all of my blocks at the end of this post.] You may remember that I was on the Design Team, and created the Milan block, inspired by the view from atop the Milan Cathedral during a trip to Milan, Italy.

For my blocks, I used a mix of prints from Carolyn Friedlander's collections, along with some Gleaned coordinating solids. For the filler blocks, I combined Kona Titanium, Pewter, Iron, Silver, and Shadow, following the original Summer Sampler plan for Hourglass blocks. Finally, come November, I had a finished quilt top!

Soooo. When it came time for quilting - remember I also had the Homage quilt to quilt - I decided to do myself a favor and get a little help. I delivered the 72" x 72" top, batt, and backing - a gray widescreen by Carolyn Friedlander - to Cindy Krafft of Cascadia Quilts.

The backing was an easy and obvious choice, since I had used so many of Carolyn's prints in my quilt blocks. Cindy was a member of Seattle MQG, and I had heard nice things about her quilting.

I really wanted the feature blocks of the quilt 'framed' and Cindy did that with some absolutely lovely straight-line quilting in the gray hourglass filler blocks. So as not to detract from the feature block designs, Cindy suggested stitch-in-the-ditch for them. The density contrast definitely is emphasized between the feature blocks and the filler blocks, which ended up resulting in a fairly supple quilt.

Two solid fabrics were used for the binding - primarily Kona Iron, with a length of Kona Shadow for a little contrast.

So my Summer Road Trip is complete! Sewing the blocks, being inspired by exotic places, was really alot of fun. And I'm super pleased with the finish. Can't ask for more than that!