Friday, July 20, 2007

Overdue but not late

I was lucky this past May to be part of a group who were pattern testers for new pattern called "Grandma Cora's Quilt".

We were helping a lovely lady named Carol work out the kinks in her adaptation of an antique quilt found by her LQS owner...I say we were helping her work out the kinks, but in reality she had things very well worked out! All we were helping with (really, I think) was timing each of the steps so that she could teach it at the shop she works at, in Tipton IN. Since she is now in the process of teaching the class, we can all let this one out from under our hats!

I took the photo of the first step (putting together the centre) to show how incredibly much things 'shrink' in the construction process!

The quilt took well over 1000 squares.

It was really, really hard not to share my progress each day as I worked on this...it went together really well, and quite quickly by my standards (in a week of my spare time, while still getting quilts done for customers). It was so exciting!

You may be surprised, but there is no strip piecing in this quilt, at least not the way I did it. I subscribe to Bonnie Hunter's Scrap Users System.
I already had a HUGE bin of precut squares of the right size - and only had to cut a paltry hundred or so once I got out into those last, big, outer triangles. I started running out of variety in my reds and had to get some other fabrics in there!

From a scrapbuster and stashbuster standpoint, this quilt was a winner. I did spring for the border fabric and for the setting triangle fabric, but the squares were all from fabrics in my stash.

The final quilt is pretty big, about 96" square. The final photo here was taken with the quilt on the ground and me standing on the trampoline.

Sadly, it has remained a UFO... and will for a while longer. I've got lots of customer quilts to get through in the next couple of months (many that are beautiful and exciting, though!) and this beaut will have to wait. It might be a good one to quilt this winter, when the light is so cold. It'll warm me up just looking at it!

Cheers,
Lisa

9 comments:

Donna said...

what a great colour modulation you've got in this quilt. Its very lovely -- bright and cheery without being "loud" in anyway :-) I'm sure you'll find a wonderful "home" for it when you get it quilted.

Vicki W said...

That is an awesome quilt! It's so "me" - lots of litle pieces! I'll have to get that pattern when it's published.

Suzanne Earley said...

Great quilt! I love the color scheme.

QuiltNut Creations said...

gorgeous!! that is amazing how much it actually did shrink

Lisa said...

I had a lot of fun with the colour...that's partly why it's so appealing to me. Most of the other versions were country or calm scrappy with a pale or white border. The original is quite pastel. I'm looking forward to quilting it and keep schemeing different feathery wonderfulnesses for the borders.

flippytale Quilter (Christine) said...

Absolutely AMAZING!

Samantha said...

This is such a fabulous quilt! I love it!

Beertje Zonn said...

Beautiful quilt, I love the color!
Regards,

Sonnja from the Netherlands

Rose Marie said...

It's a stunning quilt. Hard to believe the number of pieces in it as it doesn't look like that much which is so deceiving when you actually start counting them.