Tritanomaly Quilt #1

Previously, I had settled on a layout for my Tritanomaly Quilt featuring Tula Pink fabric... but I didn't put it together immediately, because I wasn't excited about it.  But then, I realized that I had enough blocks to make two lap quilts, and that I might like the colors better if I separated the pink from the orange, so I went back to the design wall to experiment.  The result is a smaller 3-yard quilt, suitable for a child or a throw quilt for a couch, and I know just the child who will be delighted with it! 

For layout, I sew all the pink/blue churn dashes together with the Protea print blocks, taking care that all of the flowers face the same direction so the quilt has a definite up and down orientation.  I border the entire thing with pink, and corner it with blue.  I layer it with a frankenbatting and back it with an old, 100% cotton sheet, yellow.  Time to quilt! 

ANABAPTIST FANS

I have not done enough quilting to have personal taste for what style works for what pattern.  But early in my making the Pink throw, Baptist fans suggest themselves.  I like their traditional look on a traditional quilt block like churn dash. 

Baptist fans are a pattern of concentric half-circles that overlap each other like scales.  They are usually worked in one direction across the quilt, rather than back and forth.  But as soon as I started sewing, I realized I didn't have the patience to do Baptist fans neatly, so I started a curving zig-zag instead, which I am calling an "Anabaptist fan" (because I'm a dork)! 

Art is always an interplay of vision with tools and skill.  Traditional Baptist fans were popular in hand-quilted items made in church basements by sewing bees.  It's easy to see how their pattern is shaped by those circumstances: to do the first, outer curve could be a simple sweep of the arm, using the elbow as the circle's center.  Or it could have been traced with a cup or plate.  Working the motif all in one direction makes sense if you have several ladies all clustered around the same quilt: most people are right-handed, so they all work the same direction and no-one bumps elbows.  Even the parallel lines make sense with hand-stitching: while a machine has to re-trace old lines to start the new ones parallel, a hand-sewer can slide the needle between layers without showing on the outside.  

I am not a church-lady of old.  My tool is a sewing machine, and my skill is not up to the task of retracing lines neatly.  So my Anabaptist fans are wobbly and zig-zaggy, and that is their charm!  I think they look pretty cool on the unconventional colors and patterns of Tula Pink! 

First sewing, then admiring the first row!

Marking the arches using a pan lid.

The finished back.

It's annoying to do the quilting on a home machine, though.  Boudica may be a warrior princess, but I don't enjoy fighting with fabric and pins for hours at a time!  I resolve, yet again, to figure out a Quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) method that works for me, or to never quilt anything larger than a baby blanket on Boudica. 

FACING INSTEAD OF BINDING

Here's how I make a facing to cover the edges without adding anything to the front. 

Picture 1

Picture 1 shows three parts of the binding. 
The green strip on the left is the facing for the long straight edges of the quilt.  I piece together many scraps of green to get long strips of this type. 

The pink squares in the middle are cut on grain.  To stabilize the bias I press some iron-on interfacing triangles, with their grainline running diagonally across the squares. 

The pink triangles on the right are the squares from the middle, but folded and pressed into triangles.  Normally, the long end of the triangle would be stretchy, because it's bias, but the interfacing prevents that. 

Picture 2

Not pictured, I pin the triangles onto the corners on the right side of the quilt.  On top of them, I pin the long skinny strips, all raw edges facing the perimeter of the quilt.  I sew around the whole edge with a quarter inch seam allowance, then press the long strips outward. 

Picture 2 shows the next step: I am edge-stitching just next to the last seam, on top of the ironed-outward strip.  You can see the long strips don't go all the way to the corners; the corners have the pink triangles to protect them.  

Mistakenly, I start this stitching with a 1.5 mm stitch length, and then feel like I have to do the whole thing that way for consistency!  So the whole back facing is edge-stitched with incredibly tiny stitches.  Time will tell whether this is more sturdy, or more damaging! 

Picture 3

(Not pictured: the child's name, embroidered in the center top part of the facing.)

Picture 3 is the triumphant turning of the corner! 
The upper right corner is not yet turned.  I need to trim the seam allowances first to make it less bulky.  The lower left corner is trimmed and turned. 

Picture 4 is the turned edges pressed flat and ready to be stitched down through all layers. 

Picture 4

I suppose I could have slip-stitched the facing down, but I though sewing through all layers would be stronger for a child's quilt that'll get machine washed and dried.

A HAPPY TODDLER!

So who is the child to get this quilt?  My second niece!  The first niece got a quilt when the second was born, so I made the second a quilt when the third was born.  A big-sister quilt!  My second niece is a toddler, and at the age when having something with her name on it that she can claim as her own is very important.  I visit them in mid-August, and give the Tritanomaly quilt in person. 

My three nieces, sitting on a quilt their great grandmother made, and draped in their big-sister quilts from me!