43.4 Sukey’s Reverse Quilt Top Completed!

After coming back from a much needed vacation, I set up to finish the quilt top for the Sukey’s Reverse quilt for the guild. Last post, I was waiting for some blocks, and with special guidance, was able to ask for last minute help getting the blocks done and to me in the deadline I set for myself.

So, just before leaving on vacation, I was secure in knowing I had the blocks in my possession, and the weekend I got back, was able to “vacation de-stress” and make my “at home” quilting retreat to work on the final borders and layout and quilt top for the Sukey’s Reverse quilt.

First, I made some of what I called, “magic sashing”. 

The very edges of the quilt, I made a 1.5″ strip with mostly white, but with “cornerstones” on each side of 1.5 by 1.5 so that the sashing is the same size as the final unfinished quilt block: 12.5″ Pieces added were 10.5 X 1.5

This finished out the larger block design on the outside edge.

Another guild member made several of these “inset border” blocks, just the same small block pieces that were in the rest of the quilt. I tested out the “seminole piecing” technique of surrounding these blocks by triangles cut by a quarter square triangle method.

These borders were fun and it’s always fun to “fudge” the numbers of each color needed for the side of the quilt. The quilt is based in blues, so the swirly blue is the main color in the border. But the quilt is also based in some other cool colors, and it was fun to put them into the quilt in addition.

By surrounding the block by the same color as the white (one of the colors of the four patch) the two colored pieces appear to “float” in the quilt. Since I was doing the seminole piecing, I decided one side of the triangles would be the same background, and the other side would be colored. This also makes the pieces appear to float in the middle of the border without being too wild or hard to do.

By the end of the weekend I came back, I had the whole top together and pinned to my design wall, and all the pieced borders of the quilt done. Notice how the center fabric was one fabric I had in my stash that leans purple, and somewhere in the middle on each side, is one or two fabrics that lean blue green, but the rest are blue.

The following weekend, or maybe it was the one after, I was able to attend a sewing day and get a “stay solid border” in between on the edge of the quilt.

I had electric quilt calculated the number of blocks needed for the quilt as I had made, and then got a rough idea of the full size of the inner border of the quilt.

I was originally going to make the dark border a little narrower, but tried to “size up” a little bit to try to match the pieces on the outside.

I was close. So very close. Different adjustments might have had to be made as necessary.

Turns out each pieced border was 0.25″ too long. Trimming it up, I now have added my quilt borders shown above to the edge of the quilt.

The edge of each of the side borders is also the same background color as the rest of the background. This made it really easy to be able to trim up my slightly too long pieced borders without sacrificing the design. Also lucky me that after sewing was only 0.25″ off!

I was going to add one more dark border (hard to see in the picture above, but dark blue/blue-purple is the inside border).

This quilt is measuring 103.25 by 90.25. and this part is done up to here. I am hoping to turn it over to the quilter to have it done in the late winter/early spring for the 2019 fundraising.

Lots of work, a few “rouge blocks”, lots of cajoling or reminders of getting the blocks back, and lots more organization than I really wanted to do.

At the end, I did push my guild members to get the blocks done. But contrastingly, I did push myself to get the rest of the quilt done also. Most large chunks of spare time on the weekends so far in the last month and a half have been doing something more on my part of this quilt.

I was pretty exhausted this year doing all this guild work for 2018. Doing a large part of putting together the guild show and putting this together also, not a great idea to do both around the same time frame. Maybe if there was only one or the other, it would have been a little more manageable.

A few personal items in my life early in the year, and extra hobbies this year have pushed everything so squished for 2018.

But even with all the issues, prodding, pattern writing stress, I am happy with the quilt as it is. I find it funny that my extremely scrappy blocks made first almost look out of place. But not. Not really. So many “quilt philosophies” here. I love group quilts and seeing everyone’s creativity!!!!

I haven’t quite finished the updated instructions on the borders. It’s been a mish-mash of pictures and ideas so far which I haven’t edited down to a complete item. And it turns out that the borders fit better than I originally planned as they were actually cut.

I am going to miss having Sukey’s Reverse quilt in the house! I will need to do a major amount of donations to be able to get the quilt back! Or I could make a second one. A year from now the quilt will be drawn for. A large year and fun year of this quilt in the making.

I am also going to be happy moving on to something else for a while!!!

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