Project Quilting 16.6 - Swirling Spheres

The last Project Quilting challenge of the year was called Button it Up.  My first thought was a shirt or a coat.  Boring.  I have a pile of buttons I want to use up, so how to use them?  Creating a postcard or a mug rug seemed awfully lumpy (and not very useful).  Maybe a pillow or a wall hanging would work better with the texture?  After some research on button quilts I found some interesting designs featuring circles.  I was fully inspired by this and ran with it.

Both Rob and my mother thought I was crazy attempting a wall hanging in less than a week, especially since I was still cutting and ironing circles on Friday morning.  I had a final layout by Friday evening ready to fuse in place.  Saturday morning I fused, sandwiched and quilted.  I had hoped to quilt it all with one color of thread (for speed reasons), but quickly hated how it looked.  So I took the time to rip what I quilted and switch matching thread.  It was quilted and bound with corner pockets for a hanging rod by early afternoon.  It had to be!  I ran off to dance the rest of the afternoon and evening.  I brought the quilt with me to the dance and spent the dance break burying threads.  Whew!

Sunday morning I finished burying the threads, then went about placing buttons.  I had really hoped to attach them all with invisible thread.  The few I did like this look awesome.  But it was nearly impossible to thread the needle and the darned stuff wouldn't take a knot.  By this point I only had two hours left before my noon deadline and the invisible thread was simply taking too long.  Back to finding matching thread to attach them all.  

I finished with the buttons by 11:30 but the quilt felt uneven with some blank spots - so I squeezed in another dozen buttons.  Truly done including a quick photograph by 12:02.  Yes!  Not enough time for a leisurely written blog post, so I submitted it on Instagram.  Now that I've had time to write and take a few more photos, I get to share with you.  

I thought this project would put more of a dent in my button collection.  Oh, well.  I guess I'll need to wait for another challenge.  It's a fun quilt.  Up close you can see all the different buttons.  At a distance it strikes me as having a slight lava lamp feel.  I texted a photo to my sister and she replied:  Marbles, planets, gum balls?  Sure.  It could be any of those.  Could be bubbles or stars, too.  What do you see?

 

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