TGIFF! - Home

You better believe this week is a TGIFF! around here! I'm very happy to say that I did finish Home in time for wedding (given my history, it's definitely not a sure thing that it would be done). So yay! Happy dance!

Photos were quickly taken on the way to reception so they aren't great, but this baby's done and the quilt is with the happy couple.

The name of the quilt was inspired by the giant log cabin side. My cousin and her new husband are both police officers and I know they deal with a lot of the rougher elements of our society. I wanted to contribute something special to their home and haven.

Their wedding was so much fun! We had a wonderful time with our family. Don't you think there should be more weddings?

Home - Log Cabin Side: A little bit traditional...

Home - Improv side: A little bit modern...

I really fell in love with the look of the quilting on the improv side. Gives a bit of a woven look. 

Besides the inserts on the improv piecing side, I tried a couple of new things that I thought I'd pass along to you:

A few wonky lines here and there

Random matchstick quilting: Originally I wanted to do matchstick quilting all over this quilt. Once I had done the first go with lines spaced 1/2" apart (using 50 wt. Aurifil 2260 and 40 wt. Aurifil 1103), I knew that it didn't need it and I didn't have enough time to do the fill in. It had taken 8 hours just to do the 1/2" lines. Gulp!

I did, however, want to address the slight stretch and a few of the 1/2" lines that went a little wonky.

Slight stretch in some of the lines

I decided to fill in the 1/2" lines with 1, 2, 3, or 5 lines randomly spaced using 12 wt. Aurifil 2250. I love the look of the 12 wt. beside the 40/50 wt.

Random matchstick quilting to
fill in wonky lines

But you can't fill it in to densely or the sides begin to pull in. That's fine if you are going to be consistent in doing matchstick quilting all over, but if it's randomly spaced, you don't want your edges to be wavy. I found five lines was really the maximum.

Fill quilting just starting pull edge in

Matched binding: I tried a matched binding using this tutorial on the log cabin side. Love! Will be doing it again.

Quiltography: "Home," by Michèle-Renée Charbonneau, Ottawa, Ontario, November 2013, 65" by 65".

I have to admit that this was a hard one to give away, but I know it's gone to a good home. Now I'll just have to make another one...

Celebrating with the TGIFF! crowd over at Hot Pink Quilts this week. How about you?

Home - A Work in Progress

Happy Monday, all! The reason you didn't hear much from me last week was because I was madly trying to turn this

Giant Log Cabin Side

and this

Improv Side

into a finished quilt by Friday for my cousin's wedding this past Saturday. She and her new husband both love red so that's the colour I went with!

I have to say that I LOVED piecing the improv side. It's made with the scraps from the giant log cabin side plus the scraps from this quilt. I then inserted the grey strips so that they appear to be floating on top of the background reds. This was a challenge and it was so much fun! I think you'll be seeing more of this type of piecing from me in the future.

This side also took way longer to put together than I had planned though. The log cabin side was finished a couple of weeks ago, but the improv side was finished Tuesday morning; just four days before the wedding (three days before we had to leave for said wedding). Gulp!

I was planning on doing matchstick quilting on this quilt because I just loved the texture it gave on All Things Equal. Think I finished it in time for the wedding? Find out later this week... ;)