Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Mandala

Mandala is finished, bound and labeled!  I had a beautiful sunny day for photographs in between snow storms.  It's just taken me a while to write this blog post.

The original idea was to make this a scrappy quilt, but as I settled on a layout (which was a long process because of all the possibilities!), I limited it to seven fabrics.  I was afraid that all these curved pieces would result in a lot of waste, but it turns out Flowering Snowballs can be cut with just slivers of curved pieces left over (but big enough to go into my crumb quilts).

My biggest problem with piecing it together was joining the pieces wrong-way around.  I had to rip out several of the orange-peel pieces before I got the hang of it.  I did fairly well at keeping the blocks square, even with all the curves.

I pieced some of the extra dark blue pieces for the back.  It's a great design all by itself!


The quilting was mostly outlines of the pieces - ovals and what looks to me like old-fashioned pen nibs.  I picked out three different threads:  a gold, a silvery blue and a cream.  The cream thread just about ran out before I finished all the orange peel pieces.  I had no idea I'd go through that much thread.  I love the effect on the backing.

I had one small tuck on the back that I had to pick out and restitch.  There were also a few repairs where the machine skipped stitches.  I've been fighting with lint build-up in my bobbin case in addition that the newer bobbins aren't perfectly straight.  I suspect some thread is more sensitive to a bent bobbin than others when it comes to free motion quilting.  So I cheated and stitched the short repairs with a regular foot instead of free motion quilting it.  

The quilt remained almost perfectly square and true through the quilting.  How nice!  I bound it in a dark blue that had bits of the light and medium blue in it (little polka-dots - more circles!).  The finished size is roughly 45 inches square.  

I love how bright and cheerful this is.  I hung it on my wall for a few days before sending it out.  I hope my cousin-once-removed gets lots of use from this.

Sharing with:
My Quilt Infatuation - Needle & Thread Thursday
Wendy's Quilts and More - Peacock Party




6 comments :

  1. Such an amazing finish your Mandala quilt is! Goodness, all those curves! Even the backing is impressive and the quilting patterns you decided upon are perfect. Your cousin-once-removed is going to love her quilt.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sally, Mandala is just beautiful! I'm sorry to hear you had a few quilting issues, but so glad they were fixable. This is such a lovely gift - you might have to convince them that they should use it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Absolutely gorgeous Sally! Love how it turned out, the backing too, so pretty! Quilting issues are never fun, glad it was easy fixes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Beautiful! You always turn out lovely quilts.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mandala is spectacular. I really like the quilting you did and the back truly is a beautiful design on its own. I would have had a hard time giving this one away.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gorgeous on both sides! I don't know if I like the front or back more :)

    ReplyDelete

I enjoy reading your comments and I strive to reply by email (if you're not set to no-reply).
**************************************************************************