Finished!

I finished quilting and binding this quilt over the weekend, washed it and took a nap under it today!

75" x 66"

Here's the quilt that inspired me.  

It's from Roderick Kiracoffe's collection shown in his fabulous new book,

Unconventional and Unexpected: American Quilts Below the Radar-1950-2000.

I wish I had the opportunity to meet this quilt maker.  

I'd love to talk to her about her brilliant design and the fabrics she used.

One can only imagine her process.

Mine is made mostly of shirt scraps.  I imagine hers was too.

I pieced the scraps randomly in strips of darks and lights. 

Looks like she did too.

For quilting, I couldn't tell how she did hers.  Roderick said it was done in purple thread.  

I decided to stitch in the ditch by machine, and add some hand stitching in just a few of the large blocks.  

The hand stitching looked so good, I had to keep going!  

That added another month of evenings to the process, but it was worth it.

Here you can see before and after the hand stitching.

The idea for knots on top came from the lovely and talented Carolyn at Material Obsession in Australia. 

I love the little bit of added texture they provide.

The binding is corduroy, nice and soft to touch.

I love how it looks when folded on the couch.

Every new lap size quilt at my house gets it's debut here.

I've thought of several names for this quilt:

"Many Thanks to Roderick"

"Hour Glass"

"Courthouse Steps"

"Day and Night"

"Dark and Light"

None of them have stuck.  That's fine.  

I doubt the original maker named her quilt, 

so maybe I won't either.

Oh No!

Every quilt teaches at least one life lesson.  Right?

More often than not, the lesson for me is: SLOW DOWN! 

AFTER I spent several weeks piecing, machine quilting and hand embellishing this quilt, 

I decided to test some of the fabrics for color-fastness before washing.

See that piece with the safety pin?

OH NO!!

Needless to say, I should have SLOWED DOWN and tested the fabrics BEFORE I used them!

I picked out the offending piece, cut away its stained neighbors, and replaced it.  

Luckily, there appears to be only one piece of this fabric in the quilt.

Phew!  Not too difficult.

I top-stitched it on so I could find this piece and remember the story.

In the end, the quilt had its way with me.

There's just no getting around learning these life lessons!

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Here's the color-fast test I use:  

Spray a little piece of your fabric with water, 

place a paper towel on top, and iron until it's dry.  

If it comes up clean, it's colorfast!