Album Quilt and Crazy Squares

I had a bit of a week last week for a variety of reasons, but I did manage to machine quilt this Album Quilt which I finished piecing a little while ago.  I had been putting off laying it out as it measures 70" x 96" - I find the laying out of a big quilt the worst bit, though I am so much happier since discovering 505 spray: I think spray basting is fantastic, I really, really prefer it to safety pins.

Anyway it turned out not to be as bad as I had feared (isn't that so often the way?), and even though I found a few wrinkles in one area once I got into the quilting, I was able to separate the layers, adjust and restick; so in the end it was pretty much pucker-free.

I only did a simple cross-hatch, with the lines in one direction crossing one set of squares and the lines in the other direction crossing the remaining squares: no square is unquilted, but none has two lines of stitching, as I felt this would be too dense.

Easy to mark, easy to quilt.  Lovely Aurifil 30 wt thread in just the right shade of greeny gold, with a slightly lighter shade underneath, went through the Juki like a dream.

The fabrics are mostly reproduction-type fabrics from Jo Morton, collected years ago and finally liberated from the stash.  The gold sashing was cut from borders intended for another quilt which I decided late in the day weren't right: I had just enough with a bit of creative fiddling.








Backing was an extra-wide Moda from stash - have I told you my cunning plan?  To make quilts to fit the backings I already have.  I've got to reduce my stash somehow....

I also had a day off on Friday, away from all the everyday stuff, making blocks from a Buggy Barn pattern, Crazy Squares.  Having made precise squares in squares recently for my Indigo Dreams quilt, it was nice to make some which did not have to be so exact.

The other lovely thing about the Buggy Barn style of quilt is that you cut all the pieces before you start using a master pattern, and then you switch and shuffle the fabric stack.  This means that you get the fabrics appearing in different places without having to agonise over what goes where.

Putting it all back together again was just stitching by numbers and it was very relaxing not to have to think too hard about what came next, with the added fun of seeing how the different fabrics looked together in each block.  I made 25 large blocks in a couple of days and now just have to lay them out and sew them together for a BIG quilt - and 25 fat quarters no longer lurking in my stash - hooray!  Not sure that I have a backing for this one, however....