Triforce Quilt

I have been wanting to write about this quilt since I started it, but I didn't want a certain someone to see it.  That's been happening a lot this past year.  Not only secret quilts, but now that I think of it, purple quilts, too.   Thank goodness for friends throwing purple scraps my way once in a while, otherwise I would never be able to make quilts for all the people whose favorite color is purple.  I've been wanting to make this quilt for a long time.  I actually bought the pattern in December, 2013 from Eric the Quilter's etsy shop.  So getting around to it took over three and a half years, but once I started I finished in less than 3 months.  

 The original plan was to make a wall-hanging, and I had the piecing for that pretty much finished in a couple of weeks.

Then, though, I decided to make it at least a throw size, and maybe even a twin.  That meant ripping out all those setting triangles on the bottom edge.  What fun!

I sewed and sewed, and before I knew it the top was quite a bit longer.  I still wasn't happy though because it looked too long and skinny to me.  To add to the width I would have to rip out all those setting triangles along the sides.  NO. WAY!   

How about adding some borders?  I still had plenty of purple left.

I've never worked with a quilt that had all bias edges so I stay-stitched it first to keep it from stretching   My favorite marking tool for darks really came in handy!  Love my Fons & Porter Mechanical Pencil with White Lead!

Marking and trimming made it a lot easier to add the borders.

From this point on it should have been super easy.  Hmmm, not so much.  I wanted so much for all the squares in the borders to look balanced that I made it fit and ended up with ripply borders.

I figured if I quilted a little heavier in the borders, the fullness might "quilt out" though.  Right?  No.  Wrong again.  I wanted this done!  I even took it with me on vacation and set up my own personal sewing area so I could work on it when I got tired of the pool and the beach.

I quilted two sides and wasn't happy, so I ripped it all that quilting out.  Then, I actually took the borders off.  I've never done that before on a quilt that was mostly quilted.  

I put my "Jack the Seam Ripper" to good use!  If you need a new ripper or a really special one for a gift, check his out.  They are great!

So, I removed at least two inches from each side, reattached it, got it quilted, and finally got to my favorite part - binding!

By the way, isn't that another great backing fabric?  It's from the "Mostly Manor" collection by Victoria Findlay Wolfe.  I bought it from my fave Fat Quarter Shop.

My friend, Penny, made another really beautiful label for me using a downloaded pattern of the Triforce I had purchased online.   I love that I can find just about anything I want online!  (Not sure Hubby feels the same way about my online shopping.....)

So, it's quilted, and bound .....

..... and delivered.  I feel pretty confident that this will be a much-loved quilt.  I sure put love into it!


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Scrappy Pineapple Blossom

Are you ready to hear more about the Pineapple Blossom quilt I've been working on after seeing the sneak peeks I have been posting?  This started as a block swap last year with a group of friends.  I ended up with 24 blocks but wanted to make a bigger quilt instead.  It turned out to be much bigger!  You've already seen the stack of blocks and some of them on the design wall.  I wanted the quilt to look really scrappy and really random so I just threw the blocks in a big pile on the floor, pulled them one by one from the pile.....  

.....and started sewing them into rows.  I used 121 blocks (that means there are 1,573 pieces in this quilt!) in order to make it big enough for a king size bed.

I had to lay it out on my patio to get a picture of it because there was no place else it fit.


My friend Angela at Quilted Joy is going to quilt it for me.  She does amazing work so I know it will be beautiful.  


The corner triangles that were cut off to remove bulk will go to another friend, Wendy, so she can make a "something from nothing" quilt.  There are a LOT of them!

I know whatever she makes it will be very scrappy!