SHE’S A RAINBOW

Did you ever have one of those quilts that you wrestled with from start to finish? This is one of those quilts for me. In much the same way that “The Feather Beast; Slayed” rose like a phoenix from the ashes after having Raylee (of Sunflower Quilting) work her magic on it, “She’s a Rainbow” has won my heart with her bold colours and impactful quilting.

I warn you now, there’s going to be a lot of picture spam in this post. I can’t help it, there’s something about the bright rainbow and graphic black and white that just makes my eyes giddy.

The pattern for this quilt is based on the Modern Medallion by Two Little Aussie Birds. “She’s a Rainbow” doesn’t use 3 of the included borders in the original pattern, instead I left the last one off and replaced border 1 and 3 with my own design. I changed the borders because I felt the colour effect and repeat I was aiming for worked better with a slight tweak to the pattern. (You can read about the process I went through to make this quilt top here – it even includes a handy little tutorial for paper piecing!)

My goal with this quilt was to use minimal inclusion of patterned fabric (I kept it to the two black and white prints) and use the black and white in an alternating pattern to play off the graphic nature of the quilt pattern.

I mixed in one alternate element in every border to try and add some interest and to have a little more fun; there’s one piece of patterned fabric in all the patterned borders.

I have long admired and lusted after black and white stripy binding and I felt with this quilt it was time to bite the bullet and finally use some. I’m so in love with how it’s worked out.

When I was done making the quilt top I handed it over to Raylee (of Sunflower Quilting) to work her magic on it in a custom design. I cannot begin to describe just how amazing the quilting on “She’s a Rainbow” is. Luckily for me, I don’t have to. Raylee has written all about her quilting process on her blog and you can find it here.

The centre of my quilt top had a bit of an issue with stretch and I was concerned about how it would work itself out during the quilting process, but Raylee was just too cool for school and used 3 layers of batting to fill it out and really make it pop.

Raylee echoed my purposeful accidents (the one odd colour/pattern in each border) and did the same with her quilting designs. It adds such a fun element to the quilt and works as a really great game of eye-spy.

I backed the quilt in a black and white Aboriginal print that I happened to have in abundance after I changed my mind about another quilt. I was really worried that it wouldn’t work because the quilting might show on it, but the pattern just absorbs the thread and adds such an unexpected punch.

For me though, the real stars of this quilt are the solid colours. They just seem to glow to the point of almost being neon. All of the coloured solids I picked up from Spotlight and there was no way I knew when I got them that they’d end up looking like this. It’s such a great lesson in how colours changed when partnered with black or white or both.

I decided to have a bit of a play with getting photos for this quilt and so Gemma (of Pretty Bobbins) and I headed to The Green Shed.  I know you’re all thinking I’m crazy for wanting to take this quilt into a recycling plant, but I just couldn’t resist the juxtaposition (love that word) of the textile against hard waste (like these toilets!).

I really love how this quilt has turned out, so much so that I’m thinking about hanging it on the wall of our son’s room. The colour just makes me so happy.

It wouldn’t be a quilt photo shoot without getting a lovely photo of my quilt holder-upper, Gemma.