Another Finished Quilt!

Well, I've done it!  Two finished quilts in two weeks!  It helps that I was travelling again, and that the flights were just long enough to finish 3 1/2 sides of the binding.

After my Girly Girl Quilt and all that pink, I really wanted to work on something a bit more boyish.  So I present to you... Boyish Boy Quilt!  (Temporary name, I am sure I can come up with something better!)

I just put the last stitches minutes ago and I was too eager to wait until I could take outside pictures.

 

There are lots of things I like in this quilt, starting with the colours.  They are not colours I work with a lot, but when I pulled the fat quarters out of the stash, I thought the orange, blue, green and brown mix was a lot of fun.

 

I also love the quilting I did on the "bricks".  Most of them are back and forth lines, but I did include some pebbles.  I love the look of pebbles, but find the process quite tedious so I knew I did not want to do too much of those.  I had four bricks of that fish print, so I only quilted pebbles in those four bricks.

 

 

I used thread from Connecting Threads which is a great weight when you want your quilting to stand out a bit.

 

Finally I love the backing, which is mostly in a green flannel print, also from Connecting Threads, and the binding which I think is an Amy Butler print.

 

 

There are, however a couple things I do not like about this quilt.  I debated how to quilt the blue sashing.  I thought the orange would be overpowering and I did not have blue, so I opted for green.  I had the perfect shade in Connecting Thread but for some odd reason, I chose to go with Aurifil instead (50wt).  What a disaster!  Now, I love Aurifil, it's my favourite thread.  It just was not the right thread for this project. 

 

I thought I would experiment with different weights, but by the time I realized it was not working, I was to far into it and I did not want to unpick.  You see, I did not change my stitch length from the default which is good for piecing, but way too small for quilting.  I also used my walking foot, but I think I should have free-motioned the lines to give them a more "organic" look, similar to the lines in the bricks.

Another thing that bugs me about this project is that although I carefully planned the rows so that no two similar bricks would be aligned, I somehow reversed my middle strip and ended up with not two, but three similar blue bricks in one row!  Arghhhhh!

For all its flaws, I am still pretty pleased with the overall result.  Once it's washed and crinkly, the quilting might not look as bad, and I am sure once that whoever ends up being the final recipient of that quilt won't see it with the same critical eye as I do.

 

 

So... what have you been working on?

 

Linking up to TGIFF at Quilt Matters.