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Pattern: Squares and sashing. I know. I like squares. I like sashing.
Fabrics: Temple Flowers and Charm by Amy Butler, patterns in all 3 colorways; a graphic tone-on-tone print by P&B Textiles, Cotton Supreme Solids in Marigold by RJR Fabrics
Batting: Hobbs Heirloom Premium 80/20 Cotton Batting
Finished size: 90" x 98" square
This is yet another progression of colors. Candy colors, bright and sweet. A white background this time. Wide, wide sashing to offset those bursts of color. It was made specifically for my mom, who requested something bright and cheerful for her master bedroom. This bedroom faces east, and doesn't get a lot of light past noon.
For the sashing, I found a white tone-on-tone print which looked great in the shop, but when I took it home and placed it side by side with the squares, it looked a bit much. Simply turning the fabric to its back side fixed it! You can see a hint of the pattern, but not enough to distract your eye from the colors.
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I stitched in the ditch around the color strips. Then I tried freehand quilting, just groups of wavy lines in between the color strips. I was inspired by the meandering quilting in a Japanese quilting book featuring Kaffe Fassett fabrics, and decided to try my hand at it here. You can see where the lines aren't curvy enough, but are more angular. As well, you can see where the fabric bunches up. While I can be as picky as the next person, I think that the imperfect curves and the bunching up are kind of nice.
Then again, I could look at it 5 years from now and laugh at my quilting!

Here's a closeup. I love how the wavy lines intersect, those horizontals and verticals flowing into each other.

Finally here's a look at how I took all my quilt pictures. At our apartment complex I swept the driveway clean, then laid out two flat sheets, weighting down each corner. I folded each quilt in half twice, then put the folded quilt with the corner in the middle of the sheet, then unfolded the quilt out. It's like how you'd lay out dough in a pie pan, same concept. Lastly, I went to our upstairs neighbor's balcony and took pictures of each quilt in its entirety. There was a bit of fish-eye distortion attributable to the camera, and a nice breeze that swept under the Blissful quilt, so that the picture of its backing looked lumpy. If you ever try to take pictures of your quilt in this way, make sure that your neighbor's balcony is directly over the center of your quilt, to avoid distortion due to perspective.
















