KF reds - quilt

Here are pictures of the Kaffe Fassett red quilt  I mentioned in my last post.  I thought it wold be better to show them as a separate post as I ended up taking lots more photos than I intended!

I think it is the intensity and richness of the red prints and the subtle sheen of the Oakshott shot cotton 'plain' - seems so wrong to call it it a plain/solid when sot cottons have so much more depth and life - which make my heart sing.

This was such a simple quilt to make: as you can probably see from the close ups, each block is made from four smaller blocks put together in a sort of 'doughnut' shape.  

I think I started with a 4 1/2" square of KF print (this was made in the days before 5" charm squares became so popular and available) and added 2 1/2" shot cotton stitch and flip corners.

The block finishes at 8" anyway.  I hate waste and that, to me, is the only drawback of stitch and flip; so I stitched an extra parallel seam half an inch away from the diagonal before I cut, and saved the offcut HSTs which I made into the sawtooth border, grouping them in sets of four for a change, rather than randomly.  It's because I still had some of these bonus HSTs left over that I made the table runner featured in the previous post.

I really love the sawtooth border, I feel it adds such a lot of interest to the quilt in providing contrast between the rounded shape of the doughnuts, and it's more interesting than a single fabric border.  Of course, using up leftovers is always satisfying too.  

Generally I find I always have fabric left when I am coming towards the end of piecing a quilt (as I tend to buy far more than I need, just to be safe...) and I often try to see whether I can use this in a pieced border.  It can make a quilt more interesting and unique, so why not give it some thought next time you are working on something.

Quilts stats: Finished quilt 62" x 69", made up of 56 blocks set 7 x 8.  Main block finishes at 8" and HSTs finish at 1 1/2" so the borders are 3" wide.  Scrappy binding and luscious KF stripe on the back. Longarm quilted by Susie Green, and I have a note that it was completed in May 2011, so pieced probably a couple of years before that (gosh, I have been making quilts a long time - this still seems quite a recent one...).