Scrappy Triangles Quilt

Ta Da! I have a finish! 

I've been working on this quilt since the beginning of 2021. My plan for that year was to follow the Rainbow Scrap Challenge colors by dipping into my multicolored scraps instead of the more solid-ish bins. Each week I used a pattern from Leila Gardunia's 52 Weeks of Scrappy Triangles, or Year of Scrappy Triangles (I've seen it titled both ways). My "rule" for constructing the scrappy parts of the blocks was to make sure each multicolored fabric had at least a little bit of the color of the month in it. Because this was going to result in a real mishmash of pattern and color, after a few months of piecing I chose a mottled navy for the other half of the block. I like how it both calmed the chaos and kept the colors vibrant. At the end of 2021, I knew that I wanted to keep making blocks to make a bigger quilt, so this year, I have sort of followed the RSC guides for colors but also veered off, just making blocks of whatever colors and whatever patterns of the original blocks struck my fancy. I sort of ran out of multi-colored bits of the sizes I needed, so more and more, I dipped into my other scrap bins, and that's okay. It was a fun project. But you know what? That multi-colored scrap bin is still overflowing. I'll have to come up with another idea to use it all up. If you have any desire to see any of the blocks more close up, I tried to remember to label the posts as I made them with Year of Scrappy Triangles. You can click on either the side bar or the label at the bottom of this post to see them. 

While working on the blocks I was pretty certain I wanted to arrange them in a version of a pattern that I've seen as Around and Around by Joanne Designs. (Not sure if that is the originator.) I laid them out that way. 

But then I wondered if staggering the middle part of the pattern a bit might be preferable for me. All I had to do was move the bottom three blocks to the top and shift everything down. 

As soon as I did it, I knew that that was my layout. I probably moved a few blocks around to distribute colors and patterns more evenly, but I didn't spend a lot of time on it. I'm not sure of the origin of this layout. Sometimes that information gets lost as it finds its way around social media. Some of the names I've seen are Pole Twist, Ribbon Twist, Twisted Ribbon, Ribbon Pole, DNA. I'll leave it to you to do the research if you are interested. Or if you know the origin, please let me know.

I was planning to buy a single cut of fabric for the back, but then a wander through my leftovers of other quilt back projects revealed that I had five pretty large pieces of small floral prints with lots of colors (and all of them had some turquoise in them to meld them all together). 

Two of the prints were the same print, but different dye lots. By cutting each in half and positioning them in diagonal positions, the difference was minimized. The backing is sort of, but not quite, symmetrical. It's happy and crazy though like the front, and little pieces of all but one of the fabrics is also on the front. So the back really used up a big amount of multi-colored prints! Here's a close-up of some of the prints.

With my wonky-ish vision, I knew that I could not quilt this quilt with navy thread. I found a variegated thread called Gumballs (Coats and Clark), that seemed like it was made for this quilt. 

I used it with my walking foot for casually spaced lines down the streak-of-lightning and pole patterns formed by the navy half triangles. I used off-white with a free motion meander on the colorful fabrics, because I knew that anything more detailed would be lost. I willed myself to keep the meanders fairly widely spaced so they would be about the same density as the walking foot lines. I'm really pleased with how it all turned out. 

Stats: 

Block Pattern: Year of Scrappy Triangles or 52 Weeks of Scrappy Triangles by Leila Gardunia  Blocks finish at 6 inches.

Fabrics: Years of scraps; a mottled wide-back navy fabric for the background. Could be Moda, but I really can't remember.

Batting: Fairfield 80/20.

Thread: Superior Masterpiece in Granite for piecing; Gumballs cotton machine quilting thread 30 weight, I think, by Coats and Clark for quilting on navy background and for hand-sewing the binding. Superior King Tut Cotton quilting thread in White Linen for quilting on multi-colored fabrics.

Size: Pieced 54 1/2 by 60 1/2 inches

         After quilting: 53 1/4 inches by 59 inches.

         Washed: 51 inches by 56 1/2 inches

Machines: Singer Featherweight for piecing; Singer Treadle 115 for walking foot and free motion quilting and for machine work on the binding.

After my garage photos, it was time to take the quilt into the wild for some glamour shots. I grabbed it along a couple of weeks ago when we went to visit my Dad and found a lovely little area by a goldfish pond on the property of his assisted living home. What a delightful place to show off this colorful quilt. 

Close-up of cute little rock

I'll be donating this quilt somewhere soon. I'm glad to have found a use for all of these scrappy bits. There are still more to use up...always, right? But I needed something fresh to work on, so I've just cut into some of the yummy fabrics I collected last year to make a new scrappy quilt. Bigger pieces than I usually work with, so I think it will go pretty fast. Fast finishes can be rejuvenating, I think. 

I'm linking up this week with Angela from So Scrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap. 

I hope you are having a good quilty month whether you are working on a long-term project or a fast finish.

Washed and spun

(Just a reminder: I'm not affiliated with any company, so when I mention products, services, or stores I'm just documenting what I used or liked.)