Welcome to my 100th post!

Huh.  This is post number 100.  I think it's great that it's about a finish from my quilting weekend.

I sat down to finish one of my WIPs.  It's a pretty recent WIP - I started to use up some batik scraps.

This quilt has some of my absolute favorite fabrics.

Each log cabin was meant to be pieced as a whole and then cut into four.  Using scraps though, I often didn't have big enough pieces to do that.  So I pieced each 6" blog individually so they don't all match - I actually like this about it.

Would you believe I don't like pink?

The only fabric I bought specifically for this quilt are the large white piece on the back (also inner border and binding), the dark piece (backing and a couple blocks) and the blue from the sashing and borders.

Quilted with straight lines using a green and pink variegated thread from Sulky (and my LQS).

I can't even lie, I've been carrying this around the house like Linus from the Peanuts.  I took it up to my bedroom when I went to bed last night just so I could look at it again.

Currently, we are debating whether the front or the back is better.  It's definitely one of my better pieced backs, asymmetric, colourful and it uses the big chunk of the light fabric which I kind of fell in love with in the matter of a few days (hours).

I don't know what it is, but I have a serious soft spot for batiks.  You should see the ones Mom brought back from Hawai'i.

I wish this weren't so small.  I have no idea what I'll do with it so maybe it'll just end up hanging on the wall in my quilting room.  But first it'll go to the quilt retreat with me this weekend.

Linked on

So what is wrong with this quilt?

Why do I hate it so?

Why do I prefer looking at the back instead of the front?  Maybe it's because the friend this is going to requested tan after I'd made up the front so this is meant to be reversible.

Which worked out well, I think it's absolutely reversible and I totally prefer the back.

I can look at this one in pictures and think it looks great, if a little blurry.  Apparently my camera had a fingerprint on the lens so it wouldn't focus properly. 

But I've hated working on it for awhile now.  In fact, that back?  The red and black bits were meant to be the border for the front until I decided I was done with this quilt and just wanted to finish it.  So I sewed them together in strips, added some color blocking to the outside and called it the backing.

Now here's the thing.  This is the first quilt I'll give away.  I had others that I'd planned to give away, but when I'd finished quilting them, I was unhappy.  My biggest problem has been puckers in the back.  Big, giant puckers.

But not this time!

And the straight line quilting turned out pretty good, even if I did dread every minute of it.

After my last few attempts at quilting previous quilts, I decided to spend some time investigating my problems with the quilting.  What I was doing wrong?  I narrowed it down to two things.  First, my back wasn't taut enough.  I worried about stretching the fabric and didn't smooth it as much as I should have.  I also pinned the living crap out of this quilt - which may account for some of the dislike.  That was a lot of time spent laying on a hardwood floor, fighting with safety pins.  So much that my husband suggested next time we'd try spray basting.

So, I've learned how to layer and baste and I've played a bit with a more interesting pieced back.  I may not like working on this quilt right now, but I do like what I've learned from it.

Maybe I whined just a little too much.

In other news, this quilt and I have a date with a seam ripper.

I love the prints in this beyond all reason and it's time they got used for something other than a quilt both my husband and I don't like.   Sometimes you just have to accept that it isn't going to work and you need to go back to the drawing board.

Those owls are still awesome.

Shattered - another Finish

 I kind of went a little crazy on this one with the quilting

I decided because the blocks are less structured, I'd do some random straight line quilting.  I kept thinking of Austin Powers "frickin' laser beams" as I was doing it.

I started out drawing lines until I thought I had enough coverage.  Then I quilted and added more lines to fill in some of the empty spots.  In the end I'm really happy with it. 

This quilt, while one of my oldest UFOs (2001-ish), is really representative of my quilting - a strange blend of traditional and modern.  Even the fabric on this is a blend of modern and traditional as you can see in the pictures above.

And it's bound with a tan solid from my stash.  Actually, finishing this used up quite a bit of stash for me, between the tan binding and the chunk of wide width backing fabric I used.

Score another Finished Object from the UFO pile.

Linked to Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday.