FINISH: Actual 3rd Commission quilt--Color Stripes

I did not use that poison green solid for the back.....my daughter voted it down, via text, so I used a Marshall Dry Goods mottled blue from their Tie-dyed solids collection, found at my local fabric store.  No photo of back or finished quilt......sorry !

 That's right.....I've taken the quilts to be approved, and forgetting to take the last one that I posted about, my sister-in-law loved the other three......this one, the scrappy string quilt, and the orange barn star !  She took all three without quibbling about the prices that I asked.  

  I'm happy that she's happy, and I'm ecstatic that this commission is fulfilled. (In fact, I was so thrilled to be finished --with this 3 months of work--that I didn't even get a photo of the last quilt after it was quilted !

Finishing larger than the others, at 50" x 70",  knowing that this quilt had lots of black, and being fresh out of the dryer, I didn't dare lay it on my carpet for a photo (remember, I have two in-house cats!), and these people are not pet people. I used an all cotton batting, and I have to say that with this one, I really loved the flat look of the pieced top MORE than the crinkly look of the laundered quilt.   I'm finding that I now have to choose between cotton battings and polyester ones, dependent on the finished look that I want.  I love the drape of cotton, but I enjoy the puffiness of the polyester sometimes, and the fact that it DOESN'T CRINKLE since I tend to prewash my fabrics.  Of course, since I didn't prewash this batik fabric, being that it WAS cut as a jellyroll, it might have crinkled even with a poly batt.

   As far as the commissioning goes, I don't often take on requests, specifically because of the stress that I feel during the fulfillment of them, and also for the plain reason that I like to make what I feel like making.  Sounds pretty selfish, but I'm not actually selfish with the finished product, just how I spend my time.  She meant to make this commission easy by telling me to just make whatever I wanted since she loves any quilting that I do, but I worried the whole time that it just wouldn't turn out to be what she had in mind originally.

  As far as this quilt goes, I grabbed a batik jelly-roll that I have held onto for quite a few years, and was just going to sew it into strips of color-change.  That went just fine until it came time to trim up the left and right sides to add a  border.  Even though the strips showed no sign of bowing, having sewn alternately from each end of the strip,  somehow it just wouldn't trim up right.  I was forced to come up with another idea, so I resorted to the idea of quilts that I had seen where they had cut the assembled strips into columns, turning the center one upside down.

Turns out that I like the new design much better than the original boring one !  Who knew (probably just about  every quilter ever !)

 Mid-piecing I ran out of the black fabric, and found more yardage from a different manufacturer in my stash.  They looked so very much alike that I really don't think anyone will know the difference.  But with  battling tiny bits of the cotton batting clinging to the black fabric throughout the quilting stage, I hope to NEVER use a solid black fabric again !  I'm not even sure that it won't pill, but I told her to let me know if there's ever any problem.......probably scared her to death !

Anyway...........you might not see another quilt from me for awhile, if Spring opens up where I can stay busy outside.  Hope you've enjoyed this series of quilts !

Finishing Farm Fresh Jubilee quilt

 

This one is SO CLOSE, but not quite finished.  Finally I'll have a twin-sized quilt that is actually long enough to be tucked in at the foot of the bed.  I am continually making quilts that seem to all wind up around 60 x 80....nice for an extra layer on the twin bed, but not long enough to tuck.  Atleast they DO make wonderful nap quilts for the couch or recliner.

I'll tell you where the inspiration for this one came from.   I was perusing an Annie's catalog earlier this month when I spotted a quilt that I really liked.  It looked easy enough to graph for myself, and I knew that I had fabrics that would work, so I set to drawing it out for myself. Here is one block....(pardon the wall quilt that it is pinned onto.)

 Kudos to the actual pattern designer, Jocelyn Ueng for It's Sew Emma .  A kit, called Farm Fresh Jubilee, is available from Annie's Craft Store catalog, and I much prefer HER colors.  But I just had to try to use up this Anna Marie Horner layer cake that I had purchased from Missouri Star Quilt Company.  And I had been hoarding the blue, turquoise, and green batik fat quarters , awaiting inspiration for just the right quilt.

Well, they're 20 inch blocks, and I got it pieced, and then realized that, with borders added, I had managed to make a top that measured 90+ inches long !  I thought that it was going to be longer than my quilt frame boards would accommodate for basting.  I cleared away all the furniture that I could from my living room and managed to achieve a space just big enough to be able to barely walk around the frame while thread-basting the three layers. 

Then, while trying to decide on a quilting design to use with my machine, I started looking differently at a border stencil that consists of three concentric wavy lines.  I have it in 3 sizes for three different widths of borders.  But I quilted up a sample, using the medium sized template, 4 1/2",  where I used it repeatedly for the length of the sample, and I LOVED the results.

So........the next day, I spent the WHOLE AFTERNOON drawing those wavy lines across the width of the top, for the whole LENGTH of the top !

It then took me 2 daily sessions......with breaks........to quilt the entire quilt.  AND I COULD NOT BE HAPPIER !  

I used a polyester batting, also purchased from one of MSQC's daily deals, and a 108-inch fabric from Fabric.com.  All I have left to do is label and bind this quilt, and wait for those cooler Autumn nights where I can snuggle and smile !

EDIT....UPDATE....

This quilt IS FINISHED, as of August 2, 2022.  Twin-size, finishing approximately 67 x 86 inches, after laundering, (quite a bit of shrinkage, but I had not prewashed the fabrics. ).  Cotton fabrics, polyester batting from Missouri Star Quilt Company, 90 x 108. Begun approximately July 11, 2022.