Parisville Weave - Finish!

I originally had hoped for a last week Friday finish.  The quilt was quilted, but man, the binding took me six days!  This is one of my goals on my Q3 FAL list at On the Windy Side.  That is 2 of 5 done, "Better get the lead out," as my dad used to say.  Still, 3 of the 5 goals are full-size quilts.

I've given you some sneak-peeks at this quilt over a couple of posts; well here she is.  I called her Parisville Weave because the fabric is mainly from Tula Pink's Parisville line, and the red rectangles give a woven effect.  The original quilt is "Over and Under" from Quilt Sampler Fall 2011, the first quilt I bought (I've since bought one more) from a magazine I have collected since, oh, 1998.  I've drooled over many, thought, should I? and usually talked myself out of the purchase.

Not this time.  Something about the pale sea foam paired with the vibrant red, placed amongst the other wild prints just called to me.  It might have been the primary photo, where the quilt was thrown over a red sofa.  We have a red sofa in our Florida home...

I didn't care for the way it was quilted in the magazine.  I wanted an Angela Walters-worthy design in those setting triangles.  No red thread there for me.  When I saw this design on a quilt of Kathleen's, I just knew that was it.  It  uses a signature Angela design, framed ribbon candy and elongated figure eights (note the figure eights in Tula's fabric too!) with Angela's dot to dot ideas, but put together in Kathleen style.  I love it.

Note the separate border quilting designs

The borders stumped me for a while.  Treat them as one unit, or two?  I ended up going for two, since they are sewn separately, and border 1 sections do not match up with border 2.  So in the first border I did Links, a design from Angela's book Shape By Shape, (let me just say it was a challenge quilting it sideways!)  I would use it again, as it is very effective, a continuously stitched design, with (bonus!) no marking.
In border 2, I did an Angela dot to dot border design from the same book.  Six passes, lots of ruler work, but what an effect, no?

I hand-stitched the binding down to the back, stitching for a while here and there over the first few days.  I only really sat for an extended length of time Wednesday evening and yesterday morning to get this done!  About 4.5 hours of hand-stitching all told.

I bought the backing from Fat Quarter Shop, on sale for $4.38/yard.  Like crazy-good deal.  Since I needed oh, 6-7 yards, they actually emailed me after I'd ordered to say they had the quantity but it was in two pieces; was I okay with that?  Great service.  No affiliation; I just adore them. :-)

Tried, with limited success, to get the texture to show up.  Maybe a wool batt would've shown more definition, maybe a solid backing...next quilt right?!

I wasn't sold on using this fabric when it arrived for the backing.  It is more blue than I anticipated.  However, I loved the ocean theme, since I thought it might end up living in Florida. :-)  In the end, I do think it works; that cherry pink is evident in Tula's ships fabric, the greens in many of the fabrics on the front.  And the blue?  It is in the turquoise family, so it works for me.

It is a pretty big quilt, so I had a hard time get a straight-on shot of the entire thing.  I laid it on the gravel at my neighbour's walkout basement level, then went up to his ground level, which is up in the air right, since he is built into a hill, (you got that?!) to take the above picture.  I am on his "ground" level in the picture below.

Beautiful view of Lake Erie, no?  My neighbour lives a few doors down from us.  He told me to tell everyone, if you like the quilt....his house is for sale...best view on the street.

I said in a previous post, that I bought this quilt kit before I'd even heard of Tula Pink or Modern Quilting.  I just loved the wild variety of colours here, the simplicity of the piecing, the overal impact of the design.  Who knew.

The sun was not full out; it was a typical southern Ontario summer day of that high haze for most of the day.

This is Kathleen's feather design. I saw it here.

I thought her feathers were super-cool, and since I do feathers on pretty much every single quilt,  Every.  Single.  Quilt.  well, they were perfect on the red polka dot rectangles.

In the floral red rectangles, which were oriented in the opposite direction, to create the woven effect, I did a flying geese design, similar to what Kathleen did in Pat Bravo's quilt here.

I think it enhanced the woven effect.  It separated the two reds, in that those headed "northwest" are the fun feathers, while those headed "northeast" (I'm really channeling my dad in this post) are the FMQ ghost geese.

In all the colourful squares of Tula Pink's gorgeous fabric, I did a Christina Cameli design from her book, Step By Step Free Motion Quilting, called Bauble.  It worked out super and, once again, echoes the shapes in some of Tula's fabrics.

Doesn't the Coats and Clark variegated thread look cool, at about the halfway mark of the 600 yard spool?

I used four different colours of threads, so it was a pain to constantly switch four times with each winding of the quilt, but I think it was so worth it in the end.  I lost track of my bobbins but I believe it was 4, maybe 5 pre-wound 215 yards each.

My label, as usual, applied to the backing prior to quilting:

I love this quilt so much.  I'm so glad I went for it!

Quilt Stats:
Pattern: Over and Under from Quilts Sampler Fall 2011
Size: pre-washing: 74 3/4 X 86 3/4"; post-washing: 72 3/8 X 84 3/8"
Fabric: top: Tula Pink "Parisville", some Art Gallery, the floral red is Anna Maria Horner "Innocent Crush"; backing is "Tropical Dreams" by SPX Fabrics
Batting: Warm 'n Natural
Quilted: on my Avanté, Avril
Threads:  pieced with Gütermann, quilted with Isacord 40 wt threads in #5450 (green), 3951(blue), 1704 (red), and Coats and Clark 40 wt variegated 100% polyester in pastels (Avril loved both of these quilting threads)
Number of Stitches: 289 817!  Thanks to Jasmine, I am now tracking the number of stitches on each quilt.  My Avanté has 3 703 952 stitches in her lifetime.  Some are from the previous owner, who had her for not quite 2 months, but the vast majority are mine.

I'm linking up today with TGIFF, today at My Quilt Infatuation, (thanks, Kelly, for hosting), and with Crazy Mom Quilts, and with Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

This is also going to get linked on Saturday to Pink Doxies' Pet Project Show!  I am so proud of this baby.

I'll also be linking this up to the Q3 FAL at the end of September.  Two more big quilts on my list...I can do it, I can do it, yes I can!