Sunrise

Sunrise is done and delivered.  Yay!  

I finished the flimsy back in November.  It's been so long I've forgotten much of the creative process.  I designed the pattern, picked colors, threw it on my wall and spent a lot of time rearranging things.  I sewed blocks together then rearranged some more!  After I pieced it all together I flipped it upside-down.  Not that it really matters which way is up.  That's when I decided to name it Sunrise.  It made me think of a starry night and the sun rising.

Most of the pieces I rejected for the front (or simply cut too many pieces) made it to the back.  I couldn't get enough matching pieces to make the same-style blocks as the front, so I opted to make just the squares.  I had far more extras than I thought - what was supposed to be a narrow strip is nearly half the quilt back!

My last two quilts were fairly densely quilted.  I wanted to keep this simple.  I had anticipated doing an all-over pattern, but every time I looked at the quilt I wanted to doodle in the squares and pinwheels.  The quilt is for a little boy, so I didn't want all flowers.

I ended up with two basic designs.  The squares have blocky rays that radiate from the little center square.  I didn't want everything to be straight lines, so the pinwheels got this weird loopy pattern.  It's uneven and wonky but I like the combination.

Picking thread color took so long!  I wanted to use so many colors.  I ended up with blue, green, gold, red and wine.  I quilted the square to match their center square and the pinwheels to their fabric color.  Some squares showed the contrast better than the other.  It created an interesting pattern on the back, too.

I pressed the seams open on these blocks but even so, they had bulky joins.  Add to that a pieced back - there were several lumpy areas I had to carefully quilt around (drawbacks of a pieced back!).

The quilt was delivered yesterday to its smiling new owner!   

This is the first of two quilts I designed with these wonky squares-in-squares.  At some point I photographed the steps.  One of these days when I have a spare moment, I'll write up what I did.

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