Tomorrow is the official release of my Tiptoe Though The Tulips quilt pattern, but I wanted to first share the finished photos of my biggest quilt to date... a whopping 108" (ca. 275 cm)! Wheh!... when someone says "go big or go home", it would appear that I take it quite literally!
I sent my quilt off to Iva again to work her magic. Under my old machine, I could imagine that I would still be wrestling this beast at least until Christmas. She did an all over design of leaves and blooms that seemed quite fitting to this pattern.
The majority of these pictures are taken at an old historic water mill in the area... I don't have to look very far to find a great background shot here (the beauty of living in an old country) This is actually the same water mill where my husband and I got married ten years ago. We even have a picture of us on this very same bridge overlooking the water towards the mill.
We even ran into the mill keeper... he asked if our marriage was still holding? "As long as this tall, handsome man still holds my quilts, then, yes!" I told him. Fresh, I know. But it was still nice to take a trip down memory lane with our two boys, and share a nice afternoon snack and tea afterwards in the warm spring like weather.
As you can see, the quilt fits quite nicely on our king size bed (2 x 2m) with plenty of wiggle room for my 6'5" tall-drink-of-water husband. He has visions of getting an even longer bed... hmmm, we'll see.
I'm going to have a hard time deciding which of these fantastic lampshades will end up in our bedroom. I've been drooling over them now for a very long time, and these will be the sweet birthday present from my husband. (in two weeks) Shhhh... don't tell on me that I pulled them out for the photo shoot, but like a good little girl, I packed them away again until my birthday.
Be sure to stop back by tomorrow for all the pattern details and color/design options on the March 15th official release.
Quilt: Pattern: Tiptoe Through The Tulips from Allison Richter for Campbell Soup Diary
Started: August 2016
Fabrics: Alison Glass, Carolyn Friedlander, Cotton & Steel, Lizzy House, and various additional prints from my stash. Kona Cotton White.
Finished quilt size: ca. 108" x 108" in. (275 x 275 cm)
Linking up for Finish-A-Long 2017
It really was no exaggeration, by any means, when I said that taking photos of quilts in Germany in the fall and winter months is like waiting for the sun, moon, and stars to all come into perfect alignment before the lighting is just right. Of course everyone at some point has suffered a touch of the blues when the warm, beautiful, and care free seasons begin to fade into the colder and greyer ones, but Northern German weather is a beast all of it's own! While there are no claims of perfect celestial alignment, there was enough (and I mean just barely enough) daylight to snap a few finish photos of my long-time-in-the-making Swell quilt!
Since this quilt had grown so enormously huge, I had grown so weary in pushing through, and that technically this is only my second quilt, I decided to keep the quilting quite simple (not to mention my comfort level, or should I say lack thereof, when it comes to free motion qulting) I essentially followed the natural lines of the blocks, and quilted diagonally through the white blocks, and again through the center of the colorful pluses.
There was quite a good bit of back and forth with my husband when it came to how I would finish the back of the quilt. Since he couldn't really grasp the concept of a pieced backing, he prefered the option of a single fabric solid backing. But since I didn't want a big seam line running down the middle of the back, which he argued didn't matter because it's the back, right?, I wanted to make good use of my leftover scraps and not eat up so much of my beloved Basic Grey grunge fabric... it's much more interesting than a solid, don't you think?
Looking back, I learned a lot after having finished this quilt... after the fact there are several things that I might have opted to do differently, but despite all those little this's and that's, I'm really happy to have finished this one. So, in case you've not been along for the whole ride since I started this quilt, here are the specifics:
Quilt pattern: "Swell" from Camille Roskelley's Simply Retro book.
Started: February 2014
Fabrics: Kona Cotton white and selected fabrics from Amy Butler fabric collections: Alchemy, Cameo, Soul Blossoms, and Love.
Finished quilt size: 83 x 91 in. (210 x 230 cm)
Backing: Basic Grey grunge - aqua, Amy Butler Memoir - pacific, Kona Cotton white, various Amy Butler scraps
Thread: Aurifil cotton 50 wt white
Binding: Kona Cotton, Copen
Linking up this week as always to WIP Wednesday and Let's Bee Social.
