Orange You Excited?

I'm excited! I finally finished a quilt FOR MYSELF!


This awesome and deceptively simple quilt was inspired by Jordan Fabrics' Cutting Corners tutorial on YouTube. This quilt is made with Robert Kaufman batik stripes, and uses simple half square triangles to achieve this cool step effect that looks way harder than it actually is.

Cut...

Swap!

I think the hardest part of this quilt was deciding where the finished blocks should go. I ended up making a gradient from the upper left to the lower right, so it looks like a sunset. Or fire. Or something.
 

I brought this quilt to the NWTC Artisan Center to quilt up on the longarm as practice before taking on the custom quilting on a very important baby quilt (that remains unfinished. Ugh.). I struggled a bit with it, and I'm really disappointed in myself if I'm being honest. I didn't realize that it is best to wash batik fabrics before quilting them, since the wax residue and sizing causes issues with the thread, so I battled tension problems - both thread and shoulders - and breaking thread all night long. It took me two and a half hours to quilt these simple wavy horizontal lines. Needless to say, I didn't take any selfies while quilting. I was pretty discouraged, and I haven't been back since. That was in November.


But it's finally done! Why does hand-sewing bindings seem to take longer and longer the more quilts I make?


The minute I saw this beautiful orange fabric at the quilt shop, I knew this quilt was going to go in my orange living room. I have since acquired some really cool vintage mod chairs from my grandpa, and I just love all the different shades of orange going on! I'm also working on an unusual version of a quilt ladder and a magazine holder for in here... so be on the lookout for that post sooner or later.




I even have a few squares left over to make some new throw pillow covers for my couch. The old thrifty pillows I made years ago from clearance upholstery fabric samples still look pretty good, but I think a swap would be nice.

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