Tuesday, January 14, 2014

On a cold Iowa winters day

Last week was brutal outside! Some of the coldest weather we have seen this year.  Luckily for me I am retired and don't have to go out in nasty weather unless I choose to.  And I had to, I suffered for several days first, then headed out to get antibiotics for my respiratory infection.  I spent half the week in bed....but the other half I spent working on a quilt.

Here is one of the tops I had in the closet waiting to be quilted.

 As you can see it is another scrap quilt that was donated to Iowa Comfort.  It is a bed size quilt and will be given to the center for their housing unit.  

One of the things I love to do is to figure out the construction of quilts.  This one stumped me for a long while.  You might say I couldn't see the forest for the tree's.  The scrappiness of this quilt has a bit of chaos to it, but in reality it is very organized, and simple.

When I zoomed in I saw it is a 4 patch...it is a fancier 4 patch, but it is still just a four patch.  The trick to this quilt is to keep alternating the blocks between the split corners, and the solid corners.  Each block has two patches that are light with contrasting darker fabrics.

Some of the blocks are light/medium, light/dark, or medium/dark combo's.  The quilt design was an excellent use for all those scraps that we have held on to because we might need them sometime.


The quilt was quilted with large loops.  Just enough quilting to stabilize the layers, and yet stand up to everyday wear and tear.

I used a soft cream fabric for the backing.... mainly because it appeared to be the right size for the quilt top, and I had it on hand.

As I started quilting this one, my mind began to think of binding.  

Initially I thought blue, the quilt top reads blue to me or possibly a brown.  I pulled out several possible candidates from the closet only to have that little nagging voice in your head say...."No, not that one, it just doesn't match"... have I ever told you that I hate that little voice in my head?

I was really amazed that my best choice was a dark green (I think it was actually a Christmas fabric).  It didn't clash with the top, and married well with the cream on the back.  


I was glad that I was able to complete this quilt this past week.  This next week I have a smaller quilt that was donated by Joyce to work on.  Hopefully I will be able to show it to you next week.

Enjoy your week!



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