Spring Equinox Quilt-along

Facing my curve demons

So, I did a daft thing. I signed up for a quilt along when I had said in January that I would make sure I finished all my work in progress quilt tops before I started anything new, But I have no will power and the picture of this fabulous quilt, designed by TaraLee Quiltery just sucked me in. I have always been pretty scared of curves too so with the quilt only being four blocks I thought it would not be too challenging with those big curves. Tara’s quilt examples were in two colour ways which you can see here, but I was really drawn to the one with the dark background, so I chose Oakshott Fabric’s Colourshott Midnight for mine, with a selection of bright and bold Kona solids - Lipstick, Papaya, Crimson, Pimento, Cyan, Zucchini, Niagra and Banana plus a couple from my stash which had lost their labels in the stash.

Tara’s pattern was so well written my fears of those dreaded curves were unfounded and I was so pleased at how easily the first block came together. Mind you, you can’t go wrong with Oakshott to give you a smooth press, which I think is the key to getting curves to sit well now I've had this practice. I hadn’t anticipated quite how unforgiving solids are on curves so I do think this made its little trickier for me than if I’d used a printed fabric. Within the pattern the templates for cutting down into the lower petals worked really well and this turned into one of my favourite makes for quite a while.

These work in progress shots show it’s not perfect but the contrast was really working for me so it was onwards and upwards.

Now I have the tricky job of deciding how to quilt it! I always worry that I may muck up a top that I am very happy with so I am going to take my time with this one. I’m going to experiment with the effect of orange threads onto of the dark Oakshott - it could give some great effects . The main thing though is I don’t want to take away from the impact of the colour contrasts against the background. So, please come back in a while and see how that went. In the meantime a huge thankyou to Tara for writing such great pattern and kicking me of my curve phobia. if you’d like to buy her pattern it is available here.