Color Wheel Quilt - completed!

The sun managed to peek out a little bit yesterday, enough for me to take a few photos of the color wheel quilt. Apologies in advance, this an image heavy post with cats and bad lighting - you have been warned!



Pattern - Color Wheel Quilt from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts

I can only say that I am thrilled with the quilt! It was a complete joy from start to finish. I learned lots of new techniques like chain piecing and hand sewing the binding.

When I first saw the quilt, I knew I had to make it. But the first sentence in the description really threw me: "This quilt is really simple to make." What?!?!? How could it be? But trust me - it is! Between the templates and the clear instructions, the main part of the quilt was really fun and quick.

Most of the color pieces were from the Color Wheel bundle from purl. But I switched out a few sentimental pieces.

I got these as gifts from our trip to Japan.


Both of these I used in previous projects.

Some of you may be wondering what mods I made to increase the size. The only change I made from the original pattern was to increase the sides to make it a queen size quilt. The quilt as written measures 56" by 56". I used the dimensions in Denyse Schmidt's quilting book to get a queen size quilt - 86" by 93". After my original muslin cutting debacle, I was lucky enough to have some extra wide muslin (108") in my stash, so I ended up cutting two 15.5" by 56" inch pieces, putting them on the sides, and then cutting two 19.75" by 86" inch pieces and attaching them to the top and bottom. I then quilted down the sides three inches apart, and the corners have a square pattern to them.


Here's where the original pattern and my additions meet.


The longest part of the quilt was sewing the binding on. It took me about 6 hours (or seven episodes of Nodame Cantabile) to finish it. The finished result (to me) is well worth the time.

Pretty!

Ok, now for the bad parts. They all have to do with my addition of the panels. I did three things very badly. First, I didn't cut the long strips very straight. This created some biasing. Next, I didn't sew them onto the original quilt very well. The corners of the original quilt end at a bias, and I should have been more careful sewing a somewhat straight piece to a bias piece. Lastly, I didn't hand baste the sides, I pinned them. All of this created a quilt that has lots and lots of puckering (which you can see in the top photo). I thought it would get better after washing, but instead it's just more obvious. Yipes! So I've ended up with a quilt that may not be up to some people's standards, but it's totally fine for me.

Of course, in the middle of the photo shoot, who had to come and sit right in the exact center of the quilt?


And who had to point out my messy quilting? (I've bought a ditch foot for my next project)


And who just had to turn and pose when I moved to the other side of the bed?


Unki is so in love with this quilt that he got tangled up when I was taking the detail photos and wouldn't let go!

I wonder if there will be a day when Unki doesn't pose for the camera?