Charming Painterly Petals

March is just around the corner, quite literally, so it was time to get serious about finishing another quilt if I want to achieve my goal of one WIP finish each month this year.

Because the two Painterly Petals charm packs and the Royal Blue Cotton Supreme yardage that went into the front of the quilt were not my favorite fabrics, I decided one of the Moda Gradients II I'd bought in a five-yard bundle because I loved the other four would be the perfect "time out" panel backing for this quilt. When I pulled out Parfait to look at it, it actually looked, to me, as if it was made to go on the back of this quilt.

The yard of Parfait flowers wasn't quite big enough to fill the entire backing, so I sliced some five-inch strips from the Painterly Petals yardage I'd bought specifically for the backing and the Cotton Supreme Royal Blue remnants, then sewed the strips together on both sides to then slice into exactly enough HSTs to go all the way around the panel, with two leftover blocks, which I might try later to incorporate into a pillow to go with the quilt.

I did not measure the panel before I began making the HSTs. I thought if the panel was an inch or two too big in either direction, I could simply slice off enough to make the HSTs fit. I didn't have to slice. They fit so perfectly, I was stunned! That NEVER happens to me!!!

The back still wasn't big enough, so this time I measured, then cut six 2.5-inch strips from the remaining Cotton Supreme Royal Blue... because that's all I could get out of it! All that remained when I got done was one mostly 2-inch strip. I thought I could piece it into more 2.5-inch strips if I ran out. Fortunately, I did not.

After adding the 2.5-inch borders, I had roughly 35 inches of a 2.5-inch strip of the Royal Blue left. I thought I could craft that and the mostly 2-inch strip into two more blocks to later add to the future leftovers pillow.

I didn't have much steadiness of hand with the longarm for the first half of the quilt, but in my opinion, I got better as I went. I freehanded curves into the Royal Blue triangles with blue thread on top and white on the backing. I free-motion quilted the outer round of HSTs and the borders with my little domestic machine with blue thread on both the top and the bottom. All quilting was finished in one weekend day.

Before I even though about what I would use for the backing, I had thought I would use rainbow leftovers from my Hoffman Spectrum wall quilt binding. After I finished the back, I decided the rainbow of batik leftovers wouldn't look as good with the back of the quilt as they would with the front of the quilt. I had exactly enough of the Painterly Petals yardage left to cut six strips for binding. Once again, I didn't measure, but I didn't think it would be long enough. I pieced the binding, then made random cuts and spliced in some Royal Blue diamonds, then went to work on binding the quilt.

Upon completion, I had one Royal Blue diamond and one Royal Blue remnant left. The amount of extra binding I had to cut off was exactly the same size diamond!!! This quilt literally was a mathematical miracle for me because I'm not that good at math at all, and everything worked so smoothly! Plus, almost all the (mostly) ugly fabric is gone!!!

We snapped a few photos of the quilt in front of some gorgeous red rock we had not been able to visit since... so long ago I can't even remember. Suffice it to say, Lizard had not communed with sandstone in at least 15 months, and probably longer than that. So he was in heaven. Snowflakes began dotting us as we returned to the car, and we're supposed to have around eight inches of heavy, wet snow by this morning! That put me in absolute heaven. We SO need the moisture.

Linking up with Alycia Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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