Recent Finishes - Sepia Shadows

 

I've been doing more quilting than blogging lately, so I'm playing catch-up with some of my recently finished(!) projects. First up is a minature that I did for the March Patchwork Times Monochromatic Challenge. It was finished in March, but I never quite got around to posting it until now. (Recovering Procrastinator?)

Stats: 8.25" x 8.25" finished, using cotton quilting fabric. "Batting" was some felt scraps that I had lying around. Paper pieced using Terrie Sandelin's technique & machine quilted. I've already sent it off to The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI), where hopefully it will find a good home and raise some money for an extremely worthy cause.

Reflections

• Brown is really my least favorite color, especially when it's all by itself. I like it well enough as a neutral with other shades, especially pink, purple, or red, but by itself? Not so much. One of the points of the challenge is to open our minds to new palettes, but my mind still hasn't changed on this.
• Trip Around the World/Sunshine and Shadows is my all-time favorite quilt pattern, especially when done with gradient shading. I have another miniature that I made in colors I actually like that still needs to be finished up, and I have many, many more that I've designed that I plan to move forward on making.
• Felt actually makes a great batting for a small wall quilt. It has enough "fluff" so that it shows the texture of the quilting, but the extra stiffness adds to the "hangability" of the finished quilt. I wouldn't use it on a bed quilt -- much too stiff for that. Might not be bad for a pillow, though.
• I used dark brown thread for the quilting mostly because I had it. ;) I do wish I'd used a lighter brown, or even a beige. I'm not sorry I quilted as heavily as I did for texture, but using all that dark thread made the overall effect too dark.

So, that's #1 on the list of recent finishes. Stay tuned for more!