Friday, July 19, 2013

Now What?

As soon as I saw this block design called Icky Thump by Julie at 627 Handworks, I fell in love.  (By the way, her Block Rock'n paper pieced series is just awesome - definitely check it out!)  I knew that I wanted to use it but didn't know exactly how.  Enter the BMQG's mini quilt challenge for our exhibit at the Lowell Quilt Festival and you have a marriage made in Red Nail heaven!



I had all my fabrics pulled and ready to go but I couldn't decide between the two blacks for the background of the block.  I did a test of each and let that sit for a couple days.


My first instinct was to go for the more solid black fabric, but when I asked for my husband's opinion, he immediately went for the Architectures print and said, "That one's different from what you usually do and a little more rock and edgy looking."  With a block named after a White Stripes song, I'll take rock and see what happens!


I loved the results but it was a little more work to keep all those scrawling sentences correctly aligned.  I had to pull out the seam ripper a couple times - which can be a royal pain with all of those tiny stitches through fabric and paper.


All 16 squares went together pretty quickly over a couple days and then the whole mini began to take shape!  I really love how it all turned out...just look how many shapes emerge from this pattern!





I think it would be an amazing looking full-sized quilt, but the amount of time it takes to take out all that paper - no matter how well its perforated to begin with - just takes a lot of time.  Wine helps.


So now I just have to figure out how to quilt it...any suggestions??

Side note:  I love how my random placement on the batting ended up looking like an old Polaroid!
Linking up:

15 comments:

  1. This is AWESOME! I can't believe you aligned all of the sentences.

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  2. WOW!!! So cool! Very Rock and roll. Maybe echo quilt inside each chape on the black print?

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  3. Nice! I love it and I love how well thought out your process was. I'd follow the design to quilt it- it already has a great design built right in.

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  4. Holy crap, this is amazing! Pure and total insanity lining up the text fabrics but the result is totally worth it. I truly just love it. With your color choices you can really see the shapes that form between the blocks. Thank you so much for making it!

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  5. Fabulous placement of the text fabric and love your batting/Polaroid comment. I'd echo or ditch quilt the main design and maybe fmq over the text to knock it further into the background - that'll make the main design pop out even more. This might be a contender for my next Queen Bee month - it would be great to have eleven of those blocks made up for me!!! Oh and I clicked through to The White Stripes and totally enjoyed listening to them while I've been reading/typing this, but then I do love The White Stripes, so a big thank you ;)

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  6. Okay, yeah, this is definitely a bit of alright! ;-) It makes me want to paper piece for the first time. I agree with ChrissieD - some ditch quilting and then push that black background further back with some dense line or echo quilting.

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  7. Very cool quilt! Wrestling with lining up the script in the architecture fabric looks like it was totally worth it to get that end product.

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  8. This one turned out awesome! I really love the pattern!

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  9. That is awesome - hard core - to the max! I have also been enjoying this series of blocks. Great job. Jack and Meg would be proud.

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  10. Love this one!! I can't get over the awesomeness of the architextures print. You did a fantastic job lining it up!

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  11. Wow, this is awesome!!! Your attention to detail is enviable and I love the secondary pattern. You're a serious competitor;-)

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  12. I love the way these blocks come together! The red is so striking!

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  13. Wow so pretty! You did fantastic with those colors! Maybe an echo quilting, with some type of roundish in the centers?

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  14. I like the idea of using a photo color card as color scheme inspiration.

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