Ruminate ++ Mini Quilt Finish

It's that time of the year again...each fall, Amy, who blogs over at Amy's Creative Side, hosts the Blogger's Quilt Festival on her blog.  We are allowed to link up two quilts and have the opportunity to visit and be inspired by other blogger's wonderful quilts.  

My first entry to the festival is my latest finish I have named Ruminate.  Ruminate is a verb meaning to think about seriously and I think that it fits my latest quilt finish very well.

I started this quilt back at QuiltCon 2017 (a year and a half ago) in a workshop on improv by Densye Schmidt.  In the workshop, we were supposed to start with a traditional block and after making a few regular blocks, we started playing with shape, scale, and size.

I started with the L Block which is shown below.  My L blocks become long and skinny, teeny tiny, and lopsided. I had fun at the workshop, but was totally stumped as to how to fit all of these odd sized blocks together into a quilt top.

So I left my blocks in a bag to age like fine wine for about 18 months until I was cleaning my sewing room and decided to either donate the blocks or get them sewn together.

I started by sewing pairs of like sized blocks together and then piecing the pairs together, sometimes adding an extra piece of fabric, sometimes trimming the blocks to fit.

My finished quilt top was about 24" x 30" and I wound up using almost every block I had made in the workshop.

Once I basted the quilt, I ruminated on the quilting design for a couple of weeks. Eventually I decided to use three main groupings of lines that intersected randomly across the quilt top and then added echoing lines around these groupings.

Unfortunately, because my quilt top was a little wavy (due to the blocks being cut without rulers and how the blocks were sewn together), as I quilted the straight lines, I wound up with more and more quilt top excess and was starting to get puckering of the quilt top.

I changed my quilting design after I had the initial three groups of lines and instead quilted a small bear claw design in the remaining areas. This helped to take up the excess quilt top fabric and prevented any tucks in the quilt top.

For the quilting I used a variety of Aurifil thread weights in black, white, gray, and yellow. I used 50 wt, 28 wt, and 12 wt. The 12 wt makes a bold statement on the quilt top and really stands out again the busy, print filled quilt top.

Framing the quilt with a binding did not seem like the way to go so I used a facing instead. I am thinking of hanging this quilt somewhere in my house. I am pretty happy with the way it turned and how much I learned along the way.

Thank you for stopping by through the Bloggers Quilt Festival, I hope that you stick around a bit and check out the rest of my blog :)  Here are some links...

Free Quilt Alongs

Tutorials

Pattern Writing 101

2018 Quilt Finishes

Meadow Mist Designs Etsy Shop

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I am also linking up with the fun new linky party that Michelle @ From Bolt to Beauty is hosting called Brag About Your Beauties.