Modern Quilt Goes Round 5

Oh hello my beloved blog! How I’ve missed you! I hope you missed me too! I have so much to share but I thought I’d start with an update on the most recent work on our Modern Quilt Guild Round Robin!

Here is the project I worked on:

The owner of this piece already loves it. At our last meeting when we were showing and telling our monthly progress she said “I love it because it’s bubblegum just like me!”

I was a little nervous to work on this quilt for two reasons. First, the original piece was three blocks that were needle-turn applique…a skill that I threatened to learn when I visited Hawaii a few years ago, but haven’t had any interest in since. I admire needle-turn applique for its attention to detail and hand-sewy goodness…but I just don’t want to! Second, this quilt has sashing throughout and big borders on two sides making it really difficult for me to decide where to make my additions. All the other quilts in the Round Robin have been really straightforward for me to evaluate, decide, then get to work.

Not the bubblegum.

My friend Lindsey says that a Round Robin challenge can be described as “Yes, and…” meaning round Robin work isn’t about limiting ourselves but seeing the work that came before us and saying “yes, and”. I took those words to heart as I began to evaluate this quilt.

I started out by picking one of my favorite blocks already in the quilt and saying “yes, and”…here is what I came up with:

After this I made two additional blocks but you won’t see them because, after a string of colorful swearing, I threw them in the trash. You see, I made those blocks with some hand-dyed fabric that I bought. Hand-dyed sounds so very wonderful…like lavender lip gloss or homemade peach cobbler or nice red wine. Hand-dyed….dreamy.

But, no.

In this case that hand-dyed fabric was absolute garbage. Sadly, I didn’t discover its faults until I had sewn two 14.5-inch blocks with it. I finished sewing both blocks and began to carefully press the seams because my undiagnosed OCD relishes nicely pressed seams… like I relish lavender lip gloss or homemade peach cobbler or nice red wine. I gave a spray of water to coax those seams into place and the dye started running all over the blocks.

What in the everloving hell?!?!?!?

So, I swore about it for several minutes, tossed those blocks into the garbage (along with the rest of that s#$t hand-dyed fabric), poured a kombucha, and started over.

Here is what I ended up with:

The bubblegum is on it’s way to what I think is the last round.

Speaking of loving progress…here is my Round Robin piece so far:

I’m really fond of how its turning out. I’m already daydreaming about how I’ll quilt the negative space…stay tuned!