A Beginner's Quilt

We're back from a week-long trip to Slovenia (with stops in Italy and Austria). BFF is sleeping the drive off; the last 150km was driven in the heaviest rain. You know, when your windshield wipers going at full speed with no intervals, you still can't see shit, and the only way to drive is by following the red brake lights of the car in front of you? I wimped out just past Munich. But the trip! It was amazing, I can't wait to tell you about it. I'm trying to organize the photos and my notes scrawled on the backs of receipts into a coherent narrative, so in the meantime here are my final notes on Bella.

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Pattern: Four-patch and sashing
Fabrics: Belle by Amy Butler, patterns in all 3 colorways; a graphic tone-on-tone print by P & B Textiles; Cotton Supreme Solids in Light Blue by RJR Fabrics
Batting: Hobbs Heirloom Premium 80/20 Cotton Batting
Quilting: Hand-tied with DMC Pearl Cotton, size 5, in Cream
Finished size: 80" x 80" square

You'll note that the size is fairly large for a beginner's quilt. I'd read that it's a better learning experience for the beginner to start off on a small size, a baby or lap quilt. Whatever, I thought, why would I want to break up my magnificent eBay purchase into three smaller quilts? Isn't it sometimes more fun to go by the seat of one's pants? Besides, when have I ever paid attention to rules?

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The front and back can be enlarged; just click on the image or the little plus. My sister-in-law thinks this quilt is very "beachy", very SoCal, and I tend to agree with her. The achingly-bright colors remind me of swimsuits, volleyball shorts, beach balls, umbrellas, and kids' toys. The pale sashing with its grainy tone-on-tone print of course reminds me of sand. The blue backing is very much the summer sky.

The design for this quilt took a few weeks (it was my first, after all) working with all the squares in Photoshop. I had the squares on point, then in rows, then as bricks. I couldn't really decide. Add to that the fact that I was going at this completely blind: a few quilt blogs served as my only inspiration and direction. It's difficult to combine three colorways of a pattern line especially when the colors clash. The squares, without the sashing, were a big jumble of color that BF (remember, this was made before we were married) said made him dizzy. Then one day my sister-in-law out of the blue gave me some quilt books her co-worker gave her. She'd told the co-worker what I was attempting to do, and the woman gave me a stack of instruction and pattern books that were extremely helpful. So, sashing. It breaks up the color riot quite nicely, don't you think?

Here's a closeup of a square, and my criss-crossed tie. How convenient that the cross in the middle hides misaligned corners! It was fortuitous, as I had quite a few of those. Chalk it up to beginner's luck!

One last note: I haven't recalibrated my laptop monitor in a few months, so I'm not sure the colors are the most accurate. But I hope you get the picture. It's a very summery quilt: think gorgeous bright colors.

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