So I finished the top of the braid quilt I started on Sunday with KK (the one using the jelly roll). Yay! It's always exciting to see a completed quilt top. There are several things I would do differently if I had to do it again, but I was more focused on working with fabrics that I had, which I did a good job of doing.
The main thing I would do differently would be to change the color of the pink that's in between the braid and the inner border. I wish I had used a light pink instead of the deep pink.
The problem is that there isn't enough contrast between the pink, the purple inner border, and the actual border. I had the same issue with a stained glass quilt I made several years ago. I think the real problem is that I love these colors so much together (because I had the same issue with the same colors) that I don't look past the colors to the tones of them. See... the only that that really stands out in that quilt is the bright yellow.
Don't get me wrong, it doesn't look horrible. It's a beautiful quilt, I would just do something differently next time.
I did enjoy using up some fabrics from my stash. I didn't purchase a single fabric for this quilt. It was made entirely with fabric that I had in my stash (ok, so I bought the fabric in the stash, but I didn't buy the fabric recently) and a jelly roll that my husband, Corey, gave me for
Christmas. It involved improvising on some of the dimensions, but what fun is quilting if you always follow all the directions. It's like cooking, I almost never follow recipes. I always add a little of this and a little of that... you get the idea.
One of the things that I did differently (from the pattern that is-pictured left taken from quiltersway.biz) was that I changed the width of the first inner border around the braids. The pattern called for it to be cut 3" just like the width of the "sashing" in between the braids. I didn't have enough fabric to go all the way around at 3", so I cut the fabric to 2". I think it still came out well. I really wanted to make the braids appear as though they were floating by using the same fabric for the sashing and first inner border. It took the entire yard of fabric that I had for this. The original pattern called for a yard and a half. This just g
oes to show you how you don't always have to follow the directions exactly and that you don't have to be afraid of a pattern because you don't have enough fabric.
The other thing that I did differently was adding the second inner border. The pattern didn't call for it, but I thought it was a nice touch. I also think it helped to add some contrast between the first border and the final outer border. It wouldn't have looked as good if I had just added the border like the pattern called for.
In the end, it was fun playing with a jelly roll. I would do it again. This was a pretty large quilt (about 85" tall), much larger than many of the ones I've been making lately. I'm not so sure if I'm going to be able to quilt this myself. It might be too big to do on a standard sewing machine.
It might need to be done on a long arm. We'll see. I have a bunch of other quilts that I still need to machine quilt. I need to take some time to get some of them done instead of continuing to make the tops.
That's all for now, it's off to go have a nice new years eve dinner with the hubs (and possibly do some more quilting while we wait for the ball to drop together). See you in 2009!
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