A Tale of 2 Tops: Briar Rose Quilt A Loooong

Thanks to my fabric windfall, I had twice as much fabric as I needed so I was able to knock out 2 quilt tops pretty quickly. Now they are just waiting patiently for me to buy batting & finish them up.

Both quilt tops- color explosion.

One of my frog blocks is upside down. Oh well!

double-gauze quilt DONE

After a burst of productivity, I managed to knock out this fun project.

I love the super soft double-gauze top & have been enjoying using this on nights I end up crashing in Mr. Itty Bitty's room. I also really like how light it feels. I'm not loving the scratchy essex linen I used on the back. Ugh. I've washed the quilt twice and it is everything I dreamed in terms of wrinkly goodness but the back is still too itchy for my tastes. Won't be making that mistake again! 

I have also found myself second guessing my decision to be so random with my fabric placement. I'm glad I did it because it definitely took me out of my comfort zone but I think I will forever be wondering if I shouldn't have made some fun pattern out of the greys, yellows & whites. Diagonal stripes? Herringbone? Arrows? On & on. I spend a lot of time looking at this quilt while rocking IB to sleep.  

Technicalities:

This quilt finished up 16 blocks wide by 17 blocks long, blocks were cut 6" square before being made into HST blocks.  Final size was approx 83.25" x 78.75" unwashed & 81.25" x 75.5" after washing. This was my first experiment with not prewashing my fabric & batting. 

I used a bamboo batting & I like how lightweight it is. 

I stuck to the stated plan for quilting- in the ditch diagonally to baste the batting onto the quilt top & then quilted diagonally across the blocks in the other direction after I attached the back. I didn't draw guides for my diagonal lines so they aren't perfectly straight but I really like how it turned out. 

As for the no-binding technique, I really like how it turned out! It was hard to get the backing to the exact size I needed for the front but once I did, it was pretty straightforward to sew it all around, turn it out & hand-stitch the opening closed. I had a couple of puckered spots on the back but I think that is because I didn't use any basting pins. They were easy enough to repair & I was worried about my pins snagging the delicate fabrics so no issues. 

So excited to have finished this one up! 

I mean, I'm excited but I feel stupid: Briar Rose Quilt A Looong

So if anyone is actually making a Briar Rose quilt with me, you've probably already figured this out, but basically I have twice as many squares as I need for my quilt design. Which is awesome because now I can just make 2 of the same & give one to my sweet little niece. However, this revelation has left me feeling pret-ty dumb. Though, in my defense, as noted in this post, I was struggling to understand the whole rotating quilt 90 degrees aspect of this project. I've gotten started piecing my quilt (which is how I realized my mistake) & I am loving it. BUT, I was kind of looking forward to trying some other projects with my Briar Rose stash. Specifically a rainbow HST quilt with a white background and this quilt that I'm now obsessed with.

Double-Gauze Top Complete!

Very excited to report that I've finished piecing & ironing my double-gauze quilt top AND I basted it onto the batting (a bamboo blend).

Since I'm trying a new no-binding technique (from here), my next step is attaching the batting to the top before I sew the backing on.

My plan for the quilting is to baste along the HST diagonals & then quilt a diagonal in the opposite direction through the squares. I'm worried that it will skew the quilt a little bit since it's going to be so one-directional at each stage. Fingers crossed it works!

Sorting & Placing: Briar Rose Quilt A Loooong

So I have 20 fabrics, 21 6" squares. I think I"ll make my quilt 20x20, squares set on point. First I need to figure out what order I want my fabrics in & I want to make sure the size works.

this layout was purple, pink, red

Then I decided I like purple, red, pink better but this quilt only used 19 of the patterns; it was missing the orange calico (my least favorite pattern of the bunch...) I also didn't like having the 2 frog prints at the very top & very bottom. 

I think this is my best option. Orange calico & blue calico are touching & the colors kind of go purple, red, pink, orange, yellow, blue, green but I'm going with it. 

After a couple of false starts, I decided this is the layout I like the best. My squares are approx 8.5" on the diagonal so approx 8" finished (plus additional shrinking in the wash...). Checking my A squared plus B squared equals C squared, the diagonal should be 8.485. PERFECT. Looks like my 20x20 quilt will be 80" & then shrink in the wash. 

Top 

Middle 

Bottom

I didn't have enough room in my hallway to layout an entire 20x20 quilt & I needed to hustle because I spent too long deciding on color order so I tried to stack the blocks up tilted how I want them.  This meant tilting my strawberries in opposite directions and making sure that the vignettes were spaced out in the hex bee, nanny bee & frog pond prints. Hopefully I did it correctly because this is going to be one of those quilts where I don't notice these mistakes until it's almost finished. For some reason I'm having a lot of trouble keeping this quilts layout straight in my head... there's probably a lot of seam ripping in my future. 

Next up, sewing my rows. I stacked my blocks on point from left to right & numbered my rows from 1-20 (top to bottom). So my sewing will start at top left corner & end with bottom right corner. 

Double-gauze progress

My shiny new Briar Rose quilt has been distracting me but I haven't completely abandoned my double-gauze project.

It's been a long, complicated process trying to get all of the blocks laid out- and then making sure I keep track of how the blocks were laid out. 

I've finished almost 12 out of 17 rows (technically I've finished 9.5 rows & I have 2.5 more laid out just waiting to be sewn. 

Hopefully I will finish up soon because my Robert Kaufman Essex Linen (in steel) has arrived and it is so perfect. And I wanted this to be my summer quilt & summer's almost over!

Cutting & Planning: Briar Rose Quilt World's Slowest Quilt-a-Looooong

Giving credit where due, this quilt is completely inspired by Made by Rae & based heavily on this project. OK now that that's out of the way, here's how mine is a bit different: 

1. I'm planning to use every fabric in the line unless size gets completely out of control. I've done a little "A squared plus B squared equals C squared" in my head & I think the project will finish at a large full-sized quilt. 
2. My blocks are going to be 6" squares & I did not wash fabric to preshrink. 
3. I'm planning to do the no-binding technique Rae used on her original quilt.
4. I'm going to change the fabric layout. Necessary because I will be using additional fabrics but also because I think the light pinks/purples blur together to much in the Windham project pics. 

So far I have ordered 1/2 a yard of every fabric (the *official* Briar Rose collectors pack from Heather Ross herself (squee!)). I've cut every fabric into 6" squares, so 21 squares of each fabric. Hopefully I'll end up with some extra squares for my little niece's quilt. 

only messed up cutting 5 blocks with my rotary cutter, not too bad given my skillz

As I've been cutting fabric, I've been doing a bit of issue spotting for the quilt. I am a little uptight about my pattern layouts so I'll have to decide what to do about tilting the blocks on the diagonal. Exhibits A & B: 

A

B

So Exhibit A was to illustrate the issue of trying to make sure this doesn't just look like a quilt turned on its side. I like for all of my patterns to be right side up but that's pretty much impossible since the squares are on point so I decided I would alternate which way the patterns were tilted. As I was testing this, I noticed a 2d issue with pattern placement- I wanted to alternate the frog vignettes, which I pretty well fixed in B. 

This may wind up being one of those quilts that I piece together by putting all the blocks out in order on the floor to make sure the patterns are lined up the way I like. Slow & steady. Next up, figuring out layout. Here's hoping Mr. Itty Bitty takes a nice long nap soon.