Clockwork Orange - A Finished Top

Remember this Millennium Rail Fence that I wrote about last week? I started with this, smacked it on my design wall and started playing with the suggestions from the wonderful folks who gave me their feedback last week. Thanks again for sharing your ideas with me! I love how people come up with really different ideas. It's fun to see all the different directions a quilt can go it -- and they can all work beautifully.

First, I tried some red on the border and as some applique. Nope, nothing I had worked well. Then I tried purple - nope. Needed something warmer. Pulled out the five orange fabrics that I have in my stash and auditioned them. Bingo! A dark red-orange seemed to work best -- it added some colour, but didn't clash.

Detail photo of Clockwork Orange

One suggestion was to just sandwich it, quilt and bind it. That was so tempting! Before going that route though, I thought I'd see if I could do something to visually tame the pattern craziness so I played around with some solid black. I'd had the idea of offsetting the rail fence in black so I tried that. Up on the design wall with the orange accent, I was liking it. A lot.

Detail photo of Clockwork Orange

But there was too much black. So I added an orange cross. That did it for me. With the orange cross and the black border, it will be a twin-sized quilt.

I don't find it a pretty quilt, but I love it anyways. Perhaps I love it because of just how disappointed I was with it originally. Or maybe I'm just in the honeymoon stage and in a year, I will say, "what was I thinking?!" Time will tell.

As I was pressing the orange stripe in the cross, I thought of the perfect name. Let's face it, Millennium Rail Fence had to go. A) Millennium was so last, well, millennium (sorry, just couldn't resist), and B) it was not a successful rail fence so I'd rather not emphasize what's not working. Clocks + orange = Clockwork Orange. Yay! So here is my Clockwork Orange finished top. Woo hoo! One WIP saved.

Clockwork Orange Top