Spools

 After a somewhat busy winter, I finally got around to finishing another quilt.  Not like I haven't done any quilting - in fact I was working on a completely different quilt before this one, but parked it while I decided what colour border I wanted.

The Layer Cake Spools pattern appealed to me as I had a layer cake sitting around that needed a purpose, and this seemed like a match.  To maximise use of the layer cake, I adjusted the pattern somewhat to use 40 of the 10" squares, and have a 4 x 5 'spool' layout.  I also didn't follow the instructions exactly, working with the larger first round of pieced blocks without trimming to size, so that I could end up with a slightly larger final block, and also avoid the non-standard block size. 

I paired the layer cake with a Devonstone solid in the colour 'Seeded'.  To be able to cut out 40 matching 10" squares, I knew I needed just over 2.5m of the background.  But that is an odd size to purchase, so I only bought 2.5m. The result being - if you look really closely, you'll see where I had to piece some of the background bits to make sure 4 of the squares were actually 10 inches.  

The top itself came together fairly quickly.  While I was still piecing it, I went to a local fabric destash and was able to pick up a ruler set for making circles.  I had had my eye on something like that for a while, as I was interested in quilting the baptist fan pattern one day.  This quilt was the perfect opportunity to test it out, and once the top was done and the quilt sandwich pinned together, I got started with the ruler quilting.  It took about three weeks to do, mostly on weekends, but I really like how it turned out.  Given I was quilting on my small throated domestic machine, I wrangled and repositioned the quilt enough to work on one fan at a time.  I also had to work more in some directions than others, as it turns out the rulers are longer than the space under the machine.  But I got there in the end, and it turned out pretty consistent (even though I know there are less than perfect stitches in there).

The spring weather has changed and is rather warm at the moment.  It was enough to convince me to leave work early yesterday and take photos of the quilt.  But I am also looking forward to spending the warm weather days inside doing more quilting.  I just need to fold this one up and put it in the pile with the others first.

Location: Perth WA, Australia

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