TGIFF! - Colour Pop!

Woo hoo! Colour Pop is done! Happy dance! This quilt started in an Elizabeth Olwen quilt design class with the Ottawa Modern Quilt Guild last April.

It was time to break into my black and white fabric collection and try something new for me. Okay, the rainbow isn't new, but it's all prints!

Here are the elements I wanted to play with in this quilt:

• Asymmetrical design
• Progression of the values of black and white prints outward from the rainbow
• Progression of the size of the coloured triangles
• Ruler quilting
• Getting more comfortable with prints

I am very, very happy with the design. :)

It fits perfectly!

I talked a little more about my experience with ruler quilting in this post. I will say this -- while I love the look of ruler quilting, it was very hard on my hands and arms and I probably won't try this again on a quilt this large.

When it came to the quilting, I did a concentric triangle in all of the black and white prints using a ruler and my favourite white Aurifil 2021 on both the front and the back. For the large coloured triangles, I did a different straight-line motif in each one in a matching thread colour.

I love this spirograph.

Here is the back - stuck with the black and white theme. It was the first time that I was successful at getting the pieced back to line up straight with the front. It's the little things, I tell you.

Final size: 53" by 71"

Some lessons learned:

• All black and whites are not the same. While all of the prints looked to have the same white in my studio, when I took the top outside, I found that they were not. Since this quilt's natural habitat will not be outdoors, I didn't bother fixing it.
• I wanted to make sure that the strong backing did not show through to the front so I doubled the batting. Added bonus -- the quilting shows up more.
• Because the triangles have bias edges, they can stretch more easily and I found there was some stretch along the edges of the quilt as I was quilting each triangle. To prevent or minimize this next time, I would quilt along the perimeter to stabilize the edges after I've done the grid quilting foundation and before I quilt in each triangle. Blocking the quilt also helped remove some of the waves along the edge.

And the most important lesson with this quilt? EaseOut is awesome at getting rid of crayon or marker marks on black and white quilts. To be fair to my kids, it does look like a colour book. ;)

As this was finished during Q1 Finish-A-Long, you can bet I'm linking up there.


I'm a little early, but I'm also linking up with my TGIFF peeps over with Cynthia this week.