Golden Orrery

My sister's quilt is done!  I think this is the most photos I've put in a single post. Which is fine - because this is also my year-in-review post for what I've quilted.  This is it! (Except for a name tag I made for a fellow dancer.)

I named it Golden Orrery (thanks, Quinn, for the idea!) because of its clockwork and stars.  No planets - is it technically an orrery without planets?  Well, I'm sticking with that.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story:  I offered to make my sister a queen-sized quilt.  I gave her several types of patterns to choose from.  She picked NYB blocks in roughly this layout.  She imagined it in golds and blues, to resemble clockwork or stars.  I had been dying to do a NYB quilt, which is why I made it an option - but oof!  More than once I wondered if I had bitten off more than I could chew.

I started with several free patterns for NYB, but they were all 8" blocks.  Given the design she wanted, they needed to be 12" blocks.  The first hurdle was to resize the block patterns I had on hand.

Next issue was to calculate the yardage.  This wasn't from a pattern.  I calculated the border and binding and took guesses at the rest of the yardage based on other quilts I'd done.  My guess wasn't too far off (about 16 yards of fabric).  I had to go back and buy some more of some of the blues, mostly because I miscalculated the amount necessary for the background, and a couple more golds to round out the colors.  I was so nervous as I made the last few blocks that I didn't have enough fabric - it was close!

Then the 108"x112" backing shrank when I washed it; it was literally an inch too short.  Thus the accent stripe on the back.  Turned out to be a nice feature - my sister may reverse the quilt from time to time to show that off.

I had not planned to heavily quilt it, but this quilt, like so many others, took on a life of its own.  The medallions were quilted more than I had planned and the background a little less - it all worked out.  I used gold Sulky thread to quilt it.  I'm so pleased with the little sparkle.  For once the thread behaved with my sewing machine.  The last two times I tried Sulky thread in my machine it snapped or frayed.

It would have been nice to have had a darker backing or darker thread.  I would have loved to have this quilting show up more!  It quilted wonderfully flat.  I have one section in the front and a couple little spots in the back that are really puffy, but I managed not to pucker nor fold and sew the backing to itself.  Huzzah!

Each circle is surrounded by either clockwork cogs or sun rays.  If you look closely at the photos you can them both.  Cogs were done with a ruler (my first attempt at ruler quilting) and the rest was free motion quilting.

Photographing the quilt was a challenge.  We were lucky that the gutter over the front porch was high enough (and strong enough) to hang the quilt from it.  The corners continued to flop over, so I clothespinned some cardboard to keep it straight.  Up and down the ladder - it was quite a production!

The sun was perfect for the full-quilt shots, but not so much to get the quilting to pop.  Bummer.  We brought it indoors and hung it from my nifty quilt wall, then dug out our old photography lights (we had purchased for guinea pig holiday photos).  I placed them as close to the quilt as I could.  Not nearly as good as real sunlight, but I did capture some of the quilting.

I was grateful these came out as well as they did, since I bundled up the quilt and handed it to my sister less than 24 hours later.

You need to get close and personal to see the quilting.  On the other hand, it's probably a good thing it doesn't jump out more?  Just the piecing and colors are a lot to take in.

So many times I wondered about the colors with the blocks I was building.  Would the blocks all work?  There were some that were really bright and others were muted.  Was I going to have to re-do a bunch of them?  At some point I mixed-and-matched pattern pieces (and made a few of my own) so I wouldn't repeat one pattern too much.

There's roughly three quarter-rounds for each pattern, but you'll find centers or outside rings swapped around on another dozen or so blocks.

The background inside the border is filled in with star rays and gears.  The gold leaps off the dark blue.  The starbursts on the border were the main reason I bought the ruler foot for my Singer.  They were so fun to sew. 

The fabric we picked for binding was slightly paler than the border and was flecked with gold.  How fortunate was that?  I had no idea I would be quilting it in gold when we picked the binding.

My sister wanted rounded corners, which were a blast to bind.  No turned corners on this quilt!

I placed the label in the middle of one of the border stars.  Even got to try out the fancy compass Rob got me instead of the tomato cans I had used elsewhere in the quilt. 

Fini!  Final size, around 94x106 (it shrunk a couple of inches due to the quilting).  I am thrilled to have it done - there were so many delays and hangups.  It feels a little weird not to be working on it.  Oh, but it will be nice to move on to something new. 

Sharing with:
Confessions of a Fabric Addict - Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?
My Quilt Infatuation - Needle & Thread Thursday