Ruby Jubilee

 

I look back over the number of quilts I've finished over the past year or so, and it is a lot.  But I have actually not started many.  There is a jelly roll quilt I started and completed last year, and I am working on a simple blue and orange number, but that is about it.  The rest have been finishes, and this is one of them.  I started working on it when I saw a block of the month quilt series in the Quiltmaker magazine.  A series of blocks was published in the magazine over 12 months, and looking at month number 1, I was keen to get started.  That was 18 months ago.

I really enjoyed making the different blocks as they were released every couple of months, and after 12 months was keen to see what the final layout was going to look like and how all the different sized blocks were going to fit together.  However, when final layout was released, I didn't really like it.  If you have a look at the pattern in the link above, you will see that the designer used a lot of white space and strips throughout the quilt to make the blocks fit together.  I did like the border though, and was keen to still do that.  So I decided to spend some time in a publisher program I have access to at work, and I mapped out all the 6", 8", 12" and whatever other block sizes I had, and then tried to fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle.  I ended up with an arrangement that only required some flying geese or strips of 2" blocks to fill in the gaps, and I much preferred the all-in mishmash style for this quilt.

I fair bit of time was then spent at home on the floor trying to decide which blocks should go where in my layout, but I eventually had something I liked and was able to sew the main body of the quilt into three sections.  By removing all the empty space, the quilt is a little smaller than the original, so I had to redo all the math to figure out how many blocks I'd need for the border.  And seeing as the borders were going to add 16" to the length and width of the quilt, I decided to quilt the centre before adding the borders.  The original plan to do a cross-hatch style of straight line quilting across the quilt centre, but after doing all the horizontal lines, I was over it.  It was good enough.  It was then time to square up the quilt centre, and add the first border and the wadding and backing to cover three borders.  It meant that the borders were added in almost a QAYG style, thought of course I did more quilting for each border - straight lines for the first plain border and ruler work for others.

I'm really happy with how this one turned out, and now just need to figure out where in the house it is going to go.  And whether I should keep working on the blue and orange number I have started piecing together or whether I should get the fabric ready for another red and cream/white quilt using a layer cake I have.