Choose Your Illusion Finish

I love when I can celebrate a finish. And the cool thing about this one is that I started AND finished this quilt well after the beginning of January! Hurray! To recap, I used Cheryl's pattern Use Your Illusion from Meadow Mist Designs, but I made it in rainbow colors instead of black and white, and I made 3/4 of it, skipping the first two columns. So I changed the name of the quilt a bit. With the dark, windy winter weather this week, I had to take pictures indoors, which isn't ideal (my flash isn't really strong enough to get sharp pictures), so if the weather clears up before I have to ship this off, I'm going to try some outdoor pictures and post them later. 

Here are some pictures before washing: 

If you look closely at the the wide white strip in the bottom right corner, you can see my initials and the date. 

I was planning to shuffle the blocks, but when I looked closely at Cheryl's pattern, I knew that I wanted to keep the alternating rows of white squares and colored squares marching across the quilt where the blocks come together. So I kept the layout intact, and I really like how it all came out. 

I had thought of using a rainbow variegated thread for the quilting, but I would have had to order it, and I had the white thread on hand, so white thread it was. I was on a mission to finish!

I also decided to use a scrappy binding with width-of-fabric strips. As I said in my last post, I left out the purple fabric from the binding (and the wide strip down the back) because there wasn't any purple in my main backing fabric, and the purple looked out of place with it. Using long strips instead of shorter pieces was more in the interest of time than a design decision, but I like it. The only thing I might have done differently was switching the red and orange strip so that the red part of the binding wasn't against the red patch on the back, but I think that's being too picky, don't you? 

Now, it's always a little scary to wash a quilt with bright colors and white, and when I washed the quilt, there was just a tiny amount of color transfer, mostly along the edges of some patches where seam allowances are on top of each other. (I did trim them so they wouldn't peek through on the white fabric.) It wasn't enough for me to freak out and doesn't show that much in most light, but I would hate to have that continue when it's washed in the future. I might just wash the quilt again with more color catchers and laundry detergent. Or I might try soaking it overnight in hot water with Dawn Ultra dishwashing liquid as described by Vicki Welsh on Field Trips in Fiber. I'll see if I can get my courage up. We'll see. Any suggestions?

Here's what the staining looks like. (Hard to detect, but it's there.) 

Here you can see it mostly in the upper left between the orange and red.

And here, there's a bit of turquoise between the green and turquoise strips.

I thoroughly enjoyed making this quilt. And I could not have done it without the wonderful online quilting community. Most of the fabric as well as the pattern were from giveaways. The colorful fabrics are from a Shabby Fabrics coupon through Lee at Freshly Pieced. I'll list them at the end of this post. The white fabric is from a coupon to Fat Quarter Shop through Soma at Whims and Fancies. And the pattern is from Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs (link is above), also through Soma's giveaway. A big thank you to everyone. You have made it possible for me to make a quilt that I'll be donating to Margaret's Hope Chest for the Postpartum Depression Mother-Baby Treatment Program. 

So, here are the stats:
Quilt Size:  56 1/2 inches by 42 1/2 inches before washing
                   55 1/2 by 42 after quilting
                   52 by 39 1/4 after first washing (cold water) and drying in the dryer (medium)

Sewn on Singer Featherweight
Quilted in meandering design on Singer 115 treadle with Superior King Tut thread in White Linen

Batting: Warm and Natural

Fabrics: Simply Colorful Yellow by V and Co for Moda 
              Color Theory Lime by V and Co for Moda
              Soul Blossom Lace Flower Blue by Cherry Guidry for Contempo Studio
              Veranda by Michael Miller Fabrics (the purple fabric)
              Spectrum Chamomile Leopard by Camelot Design Studio for Camelot Fabrics
              Simply Colorful Red by V and Co for Moda
              Moda Bella Solids White
              Colors and Count by Jill McDonald for Windham Fabric (backing)

With careful fabric use, I had plenty of fabric using 1/2 yard cuts of the colorful fabrics. If you make this quilt, your usage might be different from mine. The white fabric was 108" wide, and I'm not sure how much I used, but I started with 1 1/2 yards and had a piece about 56 by 32 inches left. 

If you'd like to see my other posts about this quilt (only two, I think), click on the Choose Your Illusion Quilt label at the bottom of this post. 

I'm linking up this week with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It up Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop, Devoted Quilter for TGIFF, and Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing  for Free Motion Mavericks--Yes ALL of them, because a finish doesn't come along that often, and I need to celebrate!!

Have a great weekend, and keep on quilting (and entering those wonderful giveaways that make quilts like this possible)!