My la passacaglia top is finished

Today was a very special day. I finished the hand piecing on my la passacaglia quilt. I'm so pleased with how it's turned out. I can honestly say that I wouldn't change anything about it. I love the colours and the fabrics, and I'm excited to quilt it in the weeks ahead.

January 2016
I first became aware of la passacaglia back in October 2014. I was immediately drawn to the pattern because I love intricate, clever quilt designs. As soon as I realised it was all hand stitched, I knew it would be a big undertaking, and I wondered if I'd be able to do it. I had done some English Paper Piecing before, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to hand baste all those tiny pieces and then sew them together. I've got a mild form of Rheumatoid Arthritis and my hands get very stiff and sore in the winter. Fortunately I discovered glue basting during my research, and I love it. Glue basting has saved my hands and enabled me to complete my quilt.

I started my quilt on 1 January 2015, and finished the hand piecing on 14 January 2016. That's one year and two weeks that I've been working on it. Of course, there have been periods where I've put it aside and worked on other things. For the first six months I just made rosettes in all my favourite colours without adding any stars to them.

May 2015
I wanted to plan my layout before I added stars to the rosettes. Each rosette has a different number of stars, depending on where you place it in the design.

In August 2015 Shirley Mooney and I agreed to speak about this quilt to our quilt guild. That commitment gave me the push I needed to start joining up the rosettes. I thought it would be nicer to show them a section of the quilt, rather than just 25 loose rosettes.

September 2015
Then we were asked to speak at another guild in November 2015, so I made another big effort to add a few more rosettes.

October 2015
Now Kaffe Fassett is coming to teach in Wellington in January 2016 and I would love to show Kaffe and Brandon my finished quilt top. It has at least 20 of their fabrics in it and I think they would like it.

January 2016
I guess my advice to people making this quilt would be:
1. accept that it's a long term project and allow about one year
2. spend as much time as you need planning, because then there's less unpicking required
3. set a few milestone dates to work towards - they provide good motivation
4. join the Millefiore/la passacaglia facebook group. We have nearly 5,000 members and there's so much support available from people all over the world.

I've already sorted my border fabric and I'll add the borders at the weekend. Then it's straight into the hand quilting. I don't really have a plan yet, I'll just see what works.

border fabric is Effervescence by Amelia Caruso for Robert Kaufman
There's more information about how I made this quilt on the la passacaglia - Millefiori Quilts tab at the top of the page (including links to all my previous posts).

I've been working almost exclusively on this quilt for about 6 weeks now. I feel strangely free tonight - like that feeling you have when your exams are finally over. I can work on whatever I like now. When I look back at all the hours I spent pondering fabric choices in 2015, I think I'm going to be so much more productive in 2016. The decisions for this quilt really did take longer than for any other quilt I've ever made, but I'm very happy with the outcome. It was all time well spent.