Bow Tie Required quilt
My Bow Tie Required quilt is complete! This was such a fun collaboration with my fellow Milwaukeean, fabric designer Allison Beilke.
If you've been hanging around this corner of the blogosphere for any length of time, you know I'm not much of an improv girl. Wonkiness doesn't come easily or naturally for me. But when Allison asked me to make a quilt with her Business and Leisure line, I took one look and just knew some wonkiness had to be involved somehow. I mean, it would have been borderline tragic if it had all straight lines and right angles.
So I took a deep breath and jumped in with both feet. But of course I didn't want to go too crazy-improvvy on this thing, since that is definitely not my thing. In the end, I think I came up with a good compromise. This design is wonky and improvisational, but within a definite structure, which I love.
The bow tie blocks were inspired by Allison's amazing Mad-Men-esque prints. And you guys, these blocks are genuinely fun to piece, even for a wonky-phobe like myself. In fact, they're kind of addicting. (Click here for a full tutorial on making these bow-tie blocks.)
I complimented the bow-tie blocks with some wonky squares and wonky frame blocks. They were made in a bit of an odd way in order to give them that floating appearance without too many seams, but it worked.
For the quilting, you might remember that I was attempting something new: Boxy, straight-line free-motion quilting. Wow, I found this quilting style very difficult to pull off. It's challenging to get sharp corners with a free-motion-quilting foot—you have to pause for just a beat or two, or you won't get a corner at all, and pausing is not something you normally want to do during FMQ! It's usually all smooth and flowy, while this style was all herky-jerky and kind of robotic. Then there was the matter of keeping the lines from curving, another difficult task. Last but not least, I was trying to keep the lines either perfectly vertical or horizontal—no angled lines allowed. Yeah, right! That last part proved to be the hardest to master. By the time I quilted this entire quilt, I had the sharp corners down pat, and my lines weren't curving anymore—but they sure weren't straight 90-degree angles either. LOL. Oh well—again, I think the wonkiness suits the quilt, so I'm calling this quilting style a success and moving on.
I had some pieced scraps leftover from making the bow tie blocks, so I incorporated those as one long strip of wonky diamonds on the quilt back.
The final touch was the binding—the Limbo print might become one of my favorite binding prints ever! It's perfection. I cut this binding on the straight-grain, but Limbo would be a great bias-binding print as well, since the stripes would end up angled. So many fun possibilities!
I want to thank Allison for giving me the chance to work with this fabulous line, and hope you all will check out her work, as she is an incredibly talented designer. She's got plenty of other collections available at Modern Yardage as well, including her gorgeous new "Autumn Harvest" line.