Goddess Eyes

Woot! Woot! A sort of unplanned finish for 2017.  Here is Goddess Eyes. Apologies for inside at night pics; hope to remedy this tomorrow! This is on my Q4FAL List, as and either this RSC2017 project or that one to finish. I'd hope to get 'that one' as in the Migrating Geese done, but this one jumped the queue!

Outside Sunday am in the frigid -12C weather...oh what I do for quilting pleasures. 😆

This was my Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2017 project #3 with Angela at so scrappy. My good friend Nancy, who lives in Florida, sent me a photo of this quilt done entirely in scraps, not colour-arranging like mine, on Pinterest, saying it would be a terrific easy scrap quilt.  I sure agreed, and I said let's do it as a sewing together quilt! Even though we are a thousand miles apart for the majority of the year, we could plan to sew 'together' as in at the same time, but each on our own quilts. Well, although Nancy retired from her full-time job as a nurse about a year ago, her new life is overflowing with busy-ness, and it just did not happen. However I started.  I had the idea to put a little order to the chaos of the blocks by doing two of the four corners in whatever colour of the month Angela said we were to work on. That was about all the plan I had. The black strips are whatever width, purposely not all the same.

So when it came around to several months in, I knew I had to have a wee bit more of a plan.  I started leaving the opposing corner empty of coloured strips, so I'd do two corners random, the third corner the colour of the month, and often leave the fourth 'empty'. In this way I started building the quilt and seeing where I needed to fill in.

Notice a fifth purple block started...now realizing okay, uh, exactly how am I going to do this?

Choosing to make the sides alternating reds and turquoises just happened while placing the blocks on the design wall, as in a few landed there and I thought, hmm! I like it! A warm and a cool colour, good stuff.  When it came to the neutrals month, I made the four corners neutrals. The 'X' strips are all blacks and a couple of dark greys.

Now I'm starting to get it, well mostly...do you see where the one red/green corners block can go in two different places?! And that the aqua/purple blocks maybe shouldn't have 3 of them... It started to get like a Rubik's cube!

I didn't even give this one as a choice on my Q4 FAL list; I put RSC #1 (houses) and #2 (geese) as my dilemma and everyone said do the geese, and so I am... However, serendipity struck. I had a cool idea as to how to extend the flannel backing I had bought for one of my rainbow quilts, not this one, so of course, there wasn't enough of it for the geese quilt.  But it is PERFECTION: feathers!! In rainbows!! So I gotta ya know?! And then when I sewed up my cool extension idea, and decided I better pre-shrink these flannel babies well, they took longer to dry. When you're itching to quilt, ya gotta quilt, right? Scratch that itch! I spied the strings quilt, now a flimsy thanks to using it as a leader/ender project, and thought, it's small, it's busy, I'm going to meander it, I can get a backing together lickety-split and have that baby quilted and off Avril while the flannel pieces dry... You may have seen that on the previous post, because this is a kind of DREAMi, thought not a true one, because I didn't do it all in one go, start to finish, as a true DREAMi project.

I timed the quilting, and for this 48X64 all-over meander, it took me about 80 minutes. I'm not an über-fast quilter, so I think that is pretty decent.

An outside shot of that lovely texture:

It's in the wash as I type, so I'll add another crinkly shot later. I like the way the vertical and horizontal seams have a definite line, almost a ridge to them!

Here is the back:

Love love that frogs doing yoga fabric; this is the last of it; have had the fishes forever, thinking they'd get worked into a kaleidoscope, but not yet, so they're now all gone except for a 5" strip; leftovers from H2H quilts last year is the Good Neighbors fabric down the side.

I started binding it this morning, deciding on a mottled black in my stash, but then we had to go into Windsor to run some errands (one of which was giving MacGyver my iPhone 6 and giving-ha! I wish-me a new iPhone 7, eeep! which is still 'updating iCloud settings...ugh), so the binding didn't get finished until just before supper...and it's winter in the northern hemisphere, and so the light was gone.

The label (nearly forgot again!) and binding applied by machine to the back, then wrapped around to the front and top-stitched down. 

That is my least-preferred binding method, but I was looking for speed, and didn't have to worry about going back to where I might not have caught the binding when I apply it to the front and catch the back edge when I stitch in the ditch from the front. Meh, it's a scrap quilt, and going to be used and loved. I will be gazing and reminiscing more about the myriad of scraps on the front!!

Reminiscing: I see: Dayna's Mariner's Compass, Aunt Bertha's 90th quilt, a signature one, made in 2002 (she's passed away now); a wheelchair charity quilt, a bag made for a good friend and neighbour from our condo days in Florida; a cushion for my second mum, also my piano teacher, also sadly passed away now, Tish and David's first quilt pattern I tested for them; a bag I made and reviewed for Craftsy; scraps from Freefall and Windfall; my Christmas Laurel Burch wallhanging; a quilt I made for my SIL and BIL for I think their 30th which was in 2000, a happy new home quilt I made for my niece; matching floppy hats and dresses I made Brianne and Dayna around age 8/9; Brady's Halloween quilt; oh! a piece of a quilt I made to give a dear dear friend, Marianne, who was going through very serious cancer treatment and she's here and vibrant as ever today!!! I could go on for several more lines, but I am sure you get me on this scrap quilt wonder and heart/soul/spirit massage.

Here's a daylight shot of all the fabulous variety of fabrics:

Certainly did not plan this, but cows from at least 10 years ago, Canadian designers out of Manitoba, that were two different runners for my farm folks relatives are either side of that green paisleys triangle which is a scrap from Jade, aka Little Green Cow, Helen's cushion! And I love how Olaf from 'Frozen' is peeking out! He's a scrap from a pillowcase I made for Brady.

The label:

Why did I call it Goddess Eyes? Well, do you know what a god's eye is? If not, go here. We made them as kids at summer camp. The rainbow squares on point in my quilt are rather jewel-like to me, just kind of glow, and I thought of the glowing eyes of gods and goddesses. This has been the year of empowerment of women, so goddess it is. The rainbow fish fabric works so well with the front doesn't it? Oh, and to the lower right side of the label you get a glimpse of my trademark, FMQ-signing my name and/or initials somewhere in the quilt. I'll get a daylight pic of it tomorrow.

My initials are FMQ-ed in the opposite corner, but I was freezing, so you'll have to trust me on that!

As well as showing you 'Sandra' handwritten there, you can see both sides of the binding. I'm not a fan of the line of stitching you get on the back, but it is the back, and it isn't visible on the yoga frogs fabric, so I'm mostly fine with it.

Rolled up:

And one last in the snow in a little bit of sun pic! Didn't that orange variegated thread work wonderfully in all the colours?

Quilt Stats:
Pattern:  'X' Marks the Block at Fabric Therapy
Size: approximately 48X64"
Fabric:  100% scraps
Batting: scraps of Hobbs 80/20
Quilted: on Avril
Threads:  pieced with Gütermann cotton; quilted with Aurifil 50 wt 4657 in variegated oranges, originally bought for and used on Radiance; The Bottom Line in the bobbin
# of stitches: 51 171

Quick note to perhaps check out both Craftsy and Connecting Threads (affiliate links, thank you!) for some pretty amazing year-end clearance deals. I got some fantastic ones on chocolate and a yoga top today, yesss! Not there though LOL. I always have a good supply of chocolate in my sewing loft. Always.

Linking up with
soscrappy
Cooking Up Quilts
Busy Hands Quilts

and also with a new linky party at
Clever Chameleon