Smaller beds next time

Some of you will remember back in November when I mentioned I was working on a quilt I called 'red shift.'

I am cheating and showing pictures ahead of time, but I am aware that neither of the recipients are reading blogs right now, as the female half of the duo is recovering from serious, albeit planned, surgery. (She's doing well.)

Here's what has had me obsessed since November.  All photos from the set are now public. 

You start small, with piles of fabric cut into neat shapes...

If you lay out the strips correctly, when you cut the pieces out, the right side of each of the fabrics will face each other.  End result: you can chain-piece your little toy soldiers, one after another, without needing to match up fabrics again.  Greatly speeds up the process.Toy soldiers in formation

and slowly assemble, bit by bit:

The beginning of chain-piecing: only two pieces joined together.Flags in the breeze (1)

Chain-piecing, step 2: join the sets-of-two together to make sets-of-four. Courteously modeled by my spouse.Flags in the breeze (2)

Make an arc, attach it to a melon, tack on another arc and you've got a clamshell.  Double wedding ring quilting 101.Arcs to clamshells

and one by one, they become units:

When all the pieces were finally created, they took up so much room in the reading room that I needed both the couch and love seat to spread them all out.All pieces created (1 of 2)

which you gradually assemble into bigger and bigger chunks:

The quilt top for 'red shift,' when completed, took up most of the reading room.  It WAS a king-sized quilt top, after all.  After PHE, it goes to the quilter's.The quilt that ate an entire room

and on a Thursday night you blurt out an affectionate obscenity or two and realize, well, you can finally stop staring at red and black fabric and move on to something else!

That's not exactly fair, though.  I loved working on the quilt, but I was frustrated by the end of the quilt-top assembly because I just wanted the project to end already.  A king-sized quilt comprised almost entirely of curves is not a quick assembly for anyone, much less me.  I will have a bear of a time binding I when it comes back from the quilter's, because of all those tetchy little points and curves...

...but I have now proven to myself that the double wedding ring pattern I loved so much as child is a pattern that I, fumblefingers, can reproduce.

It's quite a nice feeling, I must admit.  Just shoot me if I ever decide to do another king-size quilt.

Comments

The double wedding ring pattern is my favorite, too. Good job!

WOW! That is so incredibly gorgeous!!!!!!!!!!!!  Kudos!

my hat is off to you.

i can't even think past doing baby or kid sized quilts.

Right now, neither can I.  My brain's pretty mushy.  (And you have pregnancy brain as an excuse!)