Pinwheel blog #2

WEll, today I am sharing some special pics...THis is my craziest quilt ever. I started this one a while back and already showed some pictures of the top, but I have added a bit and gotten the back ready to go, so this one should be done soon.

This one is special because, as I said before, my mom gave me the fabric I used for the pinwheels. I loved how they came out. I began thinking about what I wanted for the back and whether or not the front was really finished. I decided that the front needed another outline and the back should be a pinwheel print, if I could find such a thing. The internet is so beautiful sometimes, and I searched for "pinwheel fabric" on google. Sure enough, I found it on ebay!

But what freaked me out was that I was going to have to buy this fabric "unexperienced". By this I mean that, although I could "see" it online, I had no idea what the texture, quality or colors would really look like, especially along side the rest of my quilt. Picking fabric can be tricky, and I have even brought fabrics home that I matched in a store or to a sample and found that they don't really work together. Needless to say I was nervous. But when the fabric came, I found that it would work. The background blue was not perfect, but the pinwheels themselves were great and just the right color. I decided that this was just going to be a crazy quilt.

There are numerous precedents for crazy quilt color combonations. Quilts made from patches have no rules at all when it comes to color. Other quilts use contrasting and coflicting colors on purpose to enhance a pattern. And I have seen some local quilters who seem to have just liked a fabric totally apart from how it might match the top of their quilt (or maybe they had a lot of that fabric left and did not want to waste it...) and so they just put the two together with a devil may care kind of attitude. Yes, we quilters can sometimes really walk on the wild side.

So I guess you would say I fall in that last category. So together the fabrics went. And then I went to a quilt show with my mom and went to a booth with the greatest African print fabrics. All the right colors to match my quilt. So I ran out to the car, got my quilt top, which I had brought along hoping for just such an occasion, and attempted to make a match. With such wild colors and patterns it was harder than I thought! But you can see what I ended up with. I like how it goes and that it makes it even crazier.

It also makes the memories even sweeter. This quilt will forever remind me of my dear dog Duke, my mothers love and comfort when I lost him, the healing up of my grief from losing him through the making of the quilt, the fun and inspiration of attending that quilt show with my mom and sister, and the excitement of trying out new things when it comes to quilting. Quilting is truly a way of "making" memories!

Anyway, I digress. The last stage of this journey involved some fabric I bought for another quilt (the Beacon Light, see below post). I needed one color to outline the back, as I felt it would make the two sides go together just a bit better. I searched around my leftover fabrics, and came across this yellow. I had tried it before with the other fabrics and had not thought it went very well. But when I held it up again, I realized that the triangles on it really complimented the triangle shape of the pinwheels. Success! My final cuts and stiches were made, and now the whole thing is ready for the Quilting Frame.

I will always treasure this crazy and fun quilt.