Bouncing Boxes

Huzzah!  This is the last of my promised quilts - and my OMG.  (For now, of course - I'm about to promise at least two more this year.)  My sewing room has reverted back to its normal configuration and level of disorder.  

Bouncing Boxes is another baby quilt.  I really enjoy working on quilts this size.  The request was for neutral colors, with pale yellow, sage or mint greens, pale browns and greys.  I dug through my stash, then went out to pick the odd colors I didn't have.  I cut so many pieces before I figured out which of the fabrics to keep and where to use them.  

This is another half-kite block design.  I like the diamonds between the squares.  Unlike the pinwheel-and-square layout, all the points come together.  That's eight seams all in one spot!

Lots of pieces didn't make it into the front.  I could have easily pieced half the backing with the leftovers.  There was enough matching pieces to create this pattern.  It would make a neat quilt pattern, but the blocks weren't easy to square and match points, so I probably won't attempt it.  The single strip made a nice accent across the cream backing.  The bulky seams from the front and that section of back made quilting it a challenge.  A good reason to not piece the entire back.

Peach!  Peach is an impossible color to find - it so easily slips to pink (which I was told NOT to include) or push to orange.  The quilt begged to have some peach included - I ended up taking two extra trips to fabric shops to find a peach that didn't fade into the diamonds yet didn't overwhelm the rest colors.

Lots of texture on this quilt!

I wanted to keep the quilting simple.  The original idea was to do an all over pattern with feathers or loops.  However, I had so much fun quilting in the boxes with the last quilt, I decided to continue that pattern with this quilt.  I filled in the diamonds first.  I laid it out to quilt a whole column of diamonds without stopping in each one.  Well... theoretically that's how it should have worked if the thread behaved.

 

My thread kept twisting and wrapping around the needle and skipping stitches.  I ripped out and started two types of threads before I found that putting the spool on the floor seemed to help.  My worst diamond had eight pairs of starts and stops.  Seriously?  I buried a lot of thread ends.  When things went well, I only had a few starts and stops in a whole column.  Had it all behaved the diamonds could have been quilted in a little over an hour instead of taking three or four times that long.  <sigh>

When I finished the diamonds I decided to switch thread.  I had several spools of thread close to the colors of the squares.  I'm really pleased with the results.  The thread compliments the squares and adds to the interest on the backing.  The brown, green, grey and peach show up really well.  I didn't have any gold thread at the time; the bright yellow I had looks good (but doesn't show up much on the back).

I wish the photos would pick up the thread color better. 

Tired of photos yet?  Two more fancy shots.  

 

I'm sure I'll be playing with more of these half-kite blocks.  I've started to write up directions for Bouncing Boxes and Sunrise, which I hope to post soon.

 

Sharing with:
Laugh Love Quilt - Monday Making
My Quilt Infatuation - Needle & Thread Thursday
Wendy's quilts and More - Peacock Party
Elm Street Quilts - June OMG