Tuesday, September 01, 2015

Break the Wheel

I finally finished up the quilting on my challenge for "Game of Quilts"  I am pretty happy with how it turned out - it's not really as much an "art" quilt as I had intended, which is usual for me! The colors turned out to be a bit of a challenge to work with as well.

After deciding that I would be happiest working with a pieced quilt I started searching for an interesting traditional block that would represent a castle.  This block came up - Castle Wall.  As I looked at it I thought the center octogon would be the perfect spot for the Targaryn Sigil of the three headed dragon.  Then I did some online research and realized that there are 8 more major houses in Westoros!  Perfect - I looked up the map and placed each sigil around the center as they appear on the map.  As I looked at this layout it made me think of a wheel and Daenerys' quotation regarding the statement that all the houses are like spokes on a wheel, crushing the common people.

The piecing was a bit tricky, all done by machine, every single one of those y-seams!  Exacting work, but very satisfying when it all comes out just right!  The border was pieced and added, then I was ready for the quilting.  I traced all the elements out on Golden Paper, then pinnned them in place and went to work.  It actually worked really well, but in the end was frustrating because of all the little pieces of paper caught under the stitching.

I wish the center showed up more.  I probably should have used a more contrasting thread to define it more, but there is no way I am picking all of that out and starting over!  I really like the way the matchstick quiting came out in the trapezoids as well.

I freehanded curved lines in the border and decided I was done.  Then I read that my quilt had to be 18 inches inclusive of binding.  Oh dear.  My quilt measured a perfect 18.5 inches to the edge because I hadn't been thinking of the binding.  I could have done a faced binding, but decided to try shrinking the quilt a bit (and maybe get rid of those last bits of paper) by washing it.  I hand washed it in cold water, then put it in the dryer for 10 minutes.  Imagine my horror when I measured and it was down to 17 1/2 inches!   I did lots of stretching, blocking, steaming, and finally ended up with an 18 inch total quilt.  WHEW!  I was seriously racking my brain trying to figure out how to add to the outside of it if the blocking didn't work....it would have been interesting.

I have to say I was relieved to find the deadline has been extended for the arrival of the quilt because I was a little worried that it could be there by Friday, so all is good now.  It is packaged up and ready to go out in today's mail!

The entries can be seen here and voting starts September 16!  I hope mine will be a winner - but in any case it was a great challenge and I enjoyed making this entry.  Thanks to the BadAss Quilters Society for putting this on!

2 comments:

Gail Lizette said...

Beautiful! Love your quilting - great job!

Sues said...

What a fabulous project! Loved hearing about all your creative decisions.