Hot+Cold {a finished quilt}

I am proud to report that after 10 months of procrastination and straight up ignoring this quilt top I have another finished quilt to show you today!

The Orange Peel Quilt-A-Long originally took place from June 30 through September 8, 2014 and was hosted by none other than Jess from Quilty Habit.  You can find all of Jess's posts here.  It was a ton of fun to participate in and I met a lot of new quilting friends through the process.

I'm calling this quilt Hot+Cold because of the progression of my love-hate relationship this quilt.  I was so excited to start the quilt but when I got the blocks laid out I hated it.  Then I sewed it together and kind of liked it again, but it sat for months because I wasn't in love anymore.  Finally I picked it up, quilted and bound it, and now it's my favorite again.

This quilt was originally much bigger.  It's one of the one's I brought with me when I visited Ellie for long arm lessons and due to an accident on my part the backing for this quilt and my Sailor's take Delight quilt I had to swap them out.  This one ended up getting trimmed down in the process.  Oh well!  I'm still happy with it.

Per my original quilting plan, I went ahead with quilting phantom orange peels on the empty squares of my quilt top, as you can see in the picture below.  I really like how it completes some of the peels and makes the whole thing feel a little more balanced in my opinion.  The outer borders were quilted in a stipple which ended up being much smaller than I anticipated when I first started off.  It took a long time to do!  All Ellie could do was laugh at me as I complained about how tired my arms were! 

This quilt is the perfect lap size for me when cuddling on the couch, though my husband still complains about all of the "tiny" quilts I make.  And my older cat Martin has decided that laps are a safe place to sit when there is a quilt in them.  I didn't capture a picture of him but the other night he was curled up in my lap on his back with both legs sticking up in the air while I scratch his tummy.  He's such a doofus, all I can do is laugh at him with his tongue hanging out of his mouth!

You can find related posts here, here, here, and here,

I'm linking up with some new posts today!

Lets Bee Social and MCM

and

Linking up with Adrianne at One the Windy Side.

Orange Peel QAL- A finished quilt top {Hot+Cold}

I finally had time to work on my Orange Peel quilt along quilt top over the weekend.  Entries close on September 8th so I was really pushing the dead line here.

Last time I talked to you about my quilt top I was feeling less than thrilled with the layout.  Piecing was not going smoothly and I really had fallen out of love with the design.  But after finishing up my center block for the Round Trip Quilts round robin bee I pulled the blocks out again and just started sewing them together, first into sets of two, then into blocks of four, and strips of eight, then rows of seven...  and along the way, I managed to fall in love again.

finished orange peel center

If I was to make this quilt again, I'd definitely do some things differently.

1. My HST were much smaller than I originally intended.  A math mistake led to 2.5" HST instead of the 5" I had intended to make.
2. I skipped trimming my HST (which was dumb) and it made the piecing that much more difficult.
3. My orange peels lost their crisp points and are a little blunted.
4. I'd concentrate the peels more to the center of the quilt and show more completed orange peel segments instead of laying them all over the top.  As it is, I think there's only one or two places where the four points all converge to form the traditional orange peel design.

But c'est la vie.  That's Life.  I like what I made but it's a little different from what I imagined when I started. 

finally trimmed my HST by hand with scissors

I added a thin 3" border in solid white to frame the orange peel top, then bordered the whole thing with some Cotton + Steel Netorious in Cloud Silver.  This warm grey off sets the saturated orange peel center nicely I think.

I think I have a plan for quilting...  I'm picturing phantom orange peels quilted on the empty blocks and HSTs.  Maybe this will help with the idea that I think there should be more concentrated orange peels on the top.

I've already picked out a backing fabric.  It's some extra yardage I got on super sale earlier this year.  Not sure what it is.  I was a little short so I decided to use up the rest of my favorite bunny print and add some aqua stripes to get the size where I needed it.

I've really had a love-hate relationship with this top.  I was so excited about the concept when I started sketching designs and piecing the blocks.  Then when I actually got to piecing the quilt top, I hated how it looked.  As I said earlier, I am finally at the point where I can appreciate it and enjoy this quilt but it's really been touch and go... That's why I am calling this quilt Hot+Cold.  I hope to snap some better photos of this quilt soon so stay tuned for more.  Once the weather cools down I can get to some quilting!

Drowning in Orange Peels

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway from this weeks Mosaic Tuesday post.  I so much appreciate all of your comments and loved reading about where you find inspiration.  I've tried to reply to each of you but with so many I may have missed some.  If so, I'm so sorry!  I'll be picking a winner tonight and announcing tomorrow.

I've been steadily working away on my Orange Peel quilt along quilt.  I spent a decent chunk of time top stitching the orange peels down.

When I was finished I ended up with this massive pile of peels and half-square triangles ready and waiting to be laid out.

 But when I started laying them out.  I didn't like the size or how busy it was.

So I spent another day cutting 2.5 inch solid squares to break up the noise a little bit and ended up with this layout.  You sort of lose the effect of the orange peel pattern I think....

I'm still not in love with it like I hoped I would be.  The points on my orange peels are iffy at best.  But I started piecing it together anyhow.

And when I did I ran into more problems with none of my seams matching up.  Ugh.  It was just one of those weeks I suppose.  I set it aside and haven't touched it for 5 days.

I also wanted to give you a heads up that I'm training for and running a half-marathon at the end of October to benefit the Children's Hospital at Dartmouth or CHaD.  You can find more information or donate on this page.  I'm sure I'll still have time for sewing but the timeliness of my blog posts may suffer as a result.

Thanks for visiting and happy quilting!

Orange Peel Progress

I've made lots of progress since Thursday when I first told you about the Orange Peel Quilt Along.

A color palette and fabrics were chosen.  I borrowed this quasi-red, white and blue theme from Chelsea at Patch the Giraffe.  (Don't worry she knows!)

Then I got to work pieced the background squares, 2 1/2 inch half-square triangles.  I used this super fast method to make 8 at a time.

And ended up with this lovely piece of patchwork all laid out on the floor.  Fun right?

Then it was time to make the orange peels.  I used this method.

And when I was done laying them all out.  They looked like this.

Now to start fusing them down.

I'm linking up with this weeks WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

Orange Peel QAL

Have you heard about the Orange Peel Quilt along happening over at the Quilt Habit?  It's running June 30th through September 8th with a link-up opening on August 23.  There will be four prizes awarded at the end for Viewer's Choice, Quilts (shortest side longer than 30"), Just the Top (for unfinished quilt tops), and Mini's (longest side shorter than 30").  Check out Jess's kick-off post for more details!

Orange peels have been on my bucket list for awhile, though I don't think I included them on my Quilt Bucket List earlier this year...  There are just so many amazing things I want to make but forget about!  I saw one inspiration photo that really drew me in and I felt so inspired.  It's from Three Kitchen Fairies.  You can find her full post about the quilt here.

So using this beautiful quilt as a launch pad I sketched a design out.  Ignore the colors for now.  These just happened to be the pen colors I had on hand at the moment.  Though the don't look to bad together.   It's fun.  It's edgy.  It's a little haphazard and just far enough outside of my comfort zone to be exciting!

I picked up some super light weight fusible interfacing this afternoon and plan on trying this approach to making the orange peels.  I like that there's no needle turning involved.  Easier is always better in my book.  I'll pull fabric tonight and hopefully get started soon!  I'm thinking a loosely defined red, white and blue color palette?