Project Quilting 17.2 Scads of Plaid

I wanted to make the Plaid-ish quilt by Erica Jackman Kitchen Table Quilting for a very long time. So when I saw Trish's prompt for this week’s PQ challenge at Kim Lapacek, I knew right away that’s what I was going to do. And I think I accomplished it, though with not as much success as I had hoped, yet I'm reminding myself it is Plaid-ish, much like Erica’s original which also uses mostly prints with a fair amount of tone-on-tone ones, though brighter. The most successful part of this was that: A. I got a finished comfort quilt and B. I used up a ton of 5" squares, several 4" squares, along with strips and various other scraps.

I missed the sunshine we had for three quarters of the day, so we have a blueish tinge to photos.

Those of you who follow me on Instagram will have see a few in-progress shots; here are a couple of them.

Beginnings. I did a lot of squinting, viewing my design wall in the evening with all lights off but the stairs, and using the monochromatic filter.

The hardest part was the medium value fabrics.

Here is what I limited myself to: 4" and 5" squares stack, strips boxes, and scrap boxes made of fabric. These hold anything basically under ¼ yard. I have two cutting counters with 24" x 36" mats, so I can spread out a fair bit. Also shown is the skinny IKEA cupboard where I store my plastic strips bins and a couple of mini plastic drawer organizers that hold thread.

I assembled the quilt by webbing columns in groups of three at a time, using a pressing method I learned years and years ago in a colourwash class that I use for nearly all of my quilt assembly process. The quilt was pieced on Billy, my 1947 Featherweight that nearly became a tractor.

Waaaay back when I was a member of the Fort Saskatchewan Quilt Guild, we did a 6" square fabric exchange. I've used a few here and there but most have just sat, and most are rather ugly. So I was very happy to use a lot of them in this quilt, along with 5" squares and 4" squares for the lights. There are only two solids: three black squares and one silver Kona 1.5" rectangle.

Below you see half of the quilt pieced. With 15 rows, it shrunk a fair bit. Mine is also square, 46". I had originally made three more rows for a rectangular quilt, but that meant the bottom ended with medium 'blocks' in the corners and that irritated my symmetrical brain, so I eliminated that row...and yes, I want to make another so I already have three rows of parts set aside!

Here is the quilt top all done, in monochromatic. For those of you near-sighted peeps like me, take your glasses off and look at the photo, another tip I learned in that colourwash class. Finally an advantage to being near-sighted! You can see where some of my darks, though they looked fine in that first monochromatic photo, do not read as dark enough thanks to some of the mediums being on the dark-medium side. I think using more tone-on-tone fabrics (varying shades of one colour) like the dark purple with eggplant tiny flowers in the bottom left corner of the un-pieced section of the quilt in the above photo, and black on a deep shade like the black swirls on deep burgundy kitty-corner to the left of it work best.

I was tickled to use a couple of plaids within the Plaidish quilt!

Not quite right, but working to a deadline, so onward we went.

When it came to the backing, I looked in the Vault of Backing Happiness, and pulled out this little-bit-Christmas/little-bit-plaid feel that worked with the warm colours on the front.

It was a true 115 cm/45" wide fabric from a way back, and I had just enough left after cutting it to about 49" length to add a bit to one side to cover the 46" top with enough room to load onto Avril to quilt it.

I cannot stress enough how satisfying it is to use up so much fabric over the past year and continue on into this one!

I thought of a meander (fast)  but I really needed all these seams to be stitched down to accentuate the plaid, and so I ditched stitched every single seam as well as adding a vertical one through the big squares. I used a fairly bright lettuce green polyester that blended well on everything except on the solid black. The "strawberry" and "lemon" 1" finished rectangles make me smile as do the kitties on grey. It could be a bit of an I Spy quilt come to think of it. It's hard to see it on the back in that photo above, but it looks cool.

For the binding I used up a fat eighth remainder of a Game of Thrones fabric along with a couple of strips of another tone on tone print, this one with stars on light brown, stitching onto the back this time and top-stitching it to the front. That way I could load a red in the bobbin to blend into the back when top-stitching, which I did with a brown/beign twist by Coats & Clark.

One last shot. Brrr! -12C when I took this, without a jacket on, in my slippers, ha. Alberta-born and raised serves me well when we get horribly cold weather for the southwestern balmy town where I now live!

This quilt will be one of the comfort quilts I donate to various places.

Quilt Stats:

Size: 46 ½" square

Pattern: Plaid-ish by Kitchen Table Quilting
Fabric: scraps

Batting: 100% polyester, various companies

Backing: by Springs Industries

Quilted: on Avril, 28 365 stitches

Threads: pieced on my Featherweight with Poly-X polyester; quilted with Exquisite polyester; 100% rayon by Floriani in the bobbin.

Updated Monday morning with a touch of sunshine, here is the freshly laundered quilt with its maker, moi. (In So. Much. Snow.)

Linking up

Songbird Designs

Quilty Girl

My Quilt Infatuation

From Bolt to Beauty

Kim Lapacek for Project Quilting