Quick quilt top

After blogging last weekend I admired the pretty Island Batik 10" stack a little longer, then untied the bundle and set to work.

Here's what I started with.

I love that it matched my African violet.  It stayed on the coffee table a whole day longer than planned, just because the grouping looked pretty.

After pressing and cutting and mixing up the prints in stacks, I moved on to laying out blocks. 

I was still enjoying the fabrics up close, but I must say the project didn't look too inspiring as a whole at this point.

Things improved as I started sewing. Sewing larger squares together was so much faster than the all the corners and small pieces on last week's red and white project.  It was a nice change of pace.  You can see I pinned labels to the blocks.  This one was the first block in the second row.  I put all the labels in the the top left quadrant of each block to help me keep track of the orientation. It wouldn't have been a huge deal if I had inadvertently turned a block, or flipped positions, but since I went to the trouble of laying all the pieces out in the first place, I figured I might as well take a few minutes to add labels.

I love the way any design seems to smarten up once the background is added and everything is neatly pressed.  This was getting better, but was still a little bit bland.  It needed a little something to dress it up.

Well, this photo doesn't do it justice.  The border background is a rich purple that really sets off the jewel tones in the small squares, which in turn make the blocks pop a little bit more. Measuring, pinning and sewing on borders is far from my favourite part of piecing a quilt, but it can sure make a difference to the design.  I think this pieced border is much more interesting than a plain one, and ends up making the blocks more interesting that they would be on their own.

This pattern is now being tested, and the top will go in the growing "to be quilted" stack.  My local quilt shop is open by appointment only at the moment to help them mitigate covid risk, so I can't run in on a whim to get what I need to finish.  I have made a long list of backings, backings and threads I need to finish several quilts from the stack so I can make good use of my appointment time on Tuesday.  If I do this right, February might be good finishing month!

What's your quilting plan this month?

Happy quilting,

Joanne

PS:  If you're wondering, everything in this quilt top is batik from Island Batik. The 10" squares are from the Jewel Quest collection, the background is a basic,  Egg White, and the border is also a basic (marble BE24-A1).  The background actually has pretty swirls of dots in subtle colors, and I can't figure out why it's called Egg White.