I'm on a roll! Deadlines, you force me to complete things.
This is Rainbow Sherbet, one of my favorite quilt designs EVER. In fact, this is my second one.
It's a Jaybird quilt, originally in a magazine and now in her book. Yes, I bought the book for this pattern. {But the other ones are pretty good too.}
When my mother-in-law came to visit last September, she brought a huge stack of batiks with her. In exchange for an impressive amount of yard work, I agreed to make her a wall hanging. She browsed my books and patterns and was drawn to this one, because she has awesome taste.
I showed her the scrap variations on the pattern, and she decided on a ROYGBIV one, but with grey instead of black. {A grey Moda Marbles, to be exact.}
The quilt came together in the week that she was here, toiling in my dirt. I think there were times she doubted how it was all going to come together, but this is is definitely a Monet.
Clueless? Literally?
Tai: Do you think she's pretty?
Cher: No, she's a full-on Monet.
Tai: What's a Monet?
Cher: It's like the painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess.
The batting/backing were a conundrum. It's a wall hanging....a 76" full size quilt wall hanging. I wanted to go light. But still stiff enough to hold its shape on the wall. I ended up using fusible fleece with no backing. I think it was the right decision - the fusible part will help keep it from sagging, but it's much lighter than a typical quilt. Backing probably wouldn't have added that much more weight, but...
Quilting, well... Quilting is always a conundrum. I wish I could free motion quilt, but I can't. Not for lack of practice - I just don't think in doodles and feathers and "free" things. I can't even draw stippling on paper.
{Sidenote: as a kid, I colored designs on graph paper and played with my math teacher mom's tessellation blocks. Never doodled.}
I considered a couple different straight line designs, but in the end, I stitched in the ditch. Yes, it's a copout, but this thing is going to be in a second story entry way. No one is going to see the lack of quilting.
It probably should have been quilted down the middle of the colors as well - the fleece got loose after washing - but, I was going for lazy lightweight.
In the end? I love it. I will always love this pattern, even if it paralyzes me at the quilting point. {Those negative spaces deserve awesome quilting! In fact, if you're my family reading this, a great birthday present would be forcing me to make this top and have it custom quilted.}
I'm really excited that it'll be greeting everyone who walks into my MIL's house - I can't wait to see it up there! OMG, I just realized my MIL did this on purpose to get me to come visit the quilt her.
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