Dare to be different – A finished Quilt

Yay! I finally finshed the scrapbuster swap quilt. It was my first swap ever and the first round was postage stamp blocks. I made a bunch of blocks, send them off across the big ocean…

… and received colourful scrappy blocks from around the world. I wanted the quilt to be big enough to serve as a throw quilt and added more blocks…

But I alwasy felt that the quilt was too busy and lacked a bit of interest and a little special something. And then, two years ago, inspiration came disguised as a book:

I knew how I wanted to use all those scrappy swap blocks. I made several grey elephants out of grey linnen. I made Elmer from more scraps and then I got stuck halfway down the way. I needed a background fabric and I was not sure how to arrange the blocks. Elmer in between colourful rows?

So what did I do? I put the entire project in a box and let it rest for almost two years. Am I the only one?!

Three weeks ago, I finally took it out again and suddenly everything went on smoothly. I made some more blocks, decided on a block layout (KISS: keep it simple and stupid) and made a reversible quilt:

And I won’t even try to diguise how happy I am with the final result. I loooooove this quilt. Both sides of the quilt. And as it is going to be used on our sofa, there is no chance that only one side will be visible.

I love how some scraps bring back memories of quilts I made and there are also squares of Mini Charm Packs that my friend Brigitte brought home from Quilt Market. I also used scraps from her four fabric lines for moda. And I love the thought, that this quilt also represents memories that my fellow swappers have of quilts that THEY made.

Here’s a close up of Elmer. Elmer is not grey like all the other elephants and at first is uncomfortable with his appearance. But by and by he realizes that his personality is not defined by his appearance and that he is happiest when he is himself – without disguise or pretentions.

A lesson I try to teach my two little sons as well: dare to be different!

So I kept the other elephants without details. I didn’t even bother to make them eyes. Only Elmer stands out. I wanted to stress his differentness by enhancing the sameness of the others.

I free motion quilted Orange Peels all over the quilt. I quilted with the patchwork side facing up, using the squares as a natural grid and using a blending grey thread for the “back”. Then I turned the quilt and stitched in the ditch of Elmer’s patchwork. Afterwards I turned the quilt again and quilted only horizontal Orange Peels (or Petals) through the other elephants.

This is a look at the back and top. I love how the Orange Peels turned out - if I do say so myself (: I thought about Dogwood at first but somehow thinking of elephants I rather thought of Orange Peel…

I used those Ann Kelle remix stripes as a binding and my favourite method of attaching the binding: the triple zig zag stitch of my sewing machine.

et voilà:

One last shoot with the patchwork side peeking over…

It is that time of the year again: It’s Blogger’s Quilt Festival again! There’s so much to be seen and so many lovely stories to be read.

This quilt is my entry for this fall. I’d say it is a Group Quilt or Scrappy Quilt.

 

Thank you very much for vising.

Please consider leaving a comment, that way I can hop over to your entry, too!

Happy Quilting everyone and remember: dare to be different!
Christine