Hexy quilt for Do Good Stitches

My hexy quilt for Do. Good Stitches is finished and looking great. But it was quite the ordeal getting it there.

I was so happy when I pulled this one out of the dryer yesterday. This is definitely my best free-motion quilting to date—my stitch lengths are starting to even up and my stippling is getting more curvy and flowing. And I couldn't be more pleased with the design (which uses my Hexing Around block tutorial), not to mention the color palette. The ladies of the Do. Good Stitches Love Circle did a fabulous job on these blocks.

And then ...... I saw this.

And this.

And THIS!

Um, horrified! I've never had color-bleeding problems before. Just to be on the safe side, I wash all of my quilts with Shout Color Catchers. And they do often catch some dye. An amazing amount of red ended up on the Color Catcher when I washed my Warm/Cool quilt. But I've never had anything like this happen—and the Color Catcher that was in the wash with this quilt only came out with a tiny amount of blue on it! I don't know how foolproof Color Catchers are supposed to be, but this one clearly didn't do its job at all.

It wasn't just one fabric that was the culprit, but appears to be at least two—one of which was in my own block, and it was a Park Slope print from Free Spirit! I am stunned that a high-end designer print like this would bleed so badly. If anyone has any thoughts as to why this may have happened on this particular quilt, please share. Because I'm stumped.But thanks to wonderful advice from Jeni and several other ladies on Flickr, I've managed to clean up this disaster pretty well. Shout Ultra Gel stain remover, a bottle of Oxi-Clean, and three trips through the washing machine later, and the dye stains have faded considerably. In fact, it might be difficult to find them if you don't know where to look. I hope so, anyway! And this quilt is nothing if not extremely clean, after four launderings. 😂

I'm super happy with the back. I love the blue, green, and orange floral plaid from Meadowsweet, but it's not the most usable print in the world. But on a back? Perfection! And it works great with my palette for this quilt.

This quilt is off to Wrap Them In Love, which distributes quilts to needy children around the world. Thank you, Love Circle, for contributing! I also was conveniently able to do this as part of Lynne's Hex-a-Long at Lily's Quilts, which you can check out here. Thank you, Lynne!

Quilt stats

Design:
My own—see Hexing Around block tutorial here

Fabric:
Various scraps contributed by Do. Good Stitches' Love Circle

Back:
Metro Living Circles in Chartreuse, Modern Meadow Acorn Chain in Pond, Full Moon Dot in Tangerine, Kona Cotton in Sage, Kona Cotton in Banana, Sandy Henderson's Meadowsweet Peony Plaid in Lime, Tufted Tweets Ovals in Grass

Binding:
Michael Miller Ta Dot in Sea

Size:
44" x 61"

Quilting:
FMQ stippling by me on my home machineCompleted: September 2011