Bubblegum Square Dance

My entry to Project Quilting Season Four, Challenge 1: Square in a Square…

My inspiration was the two striped fabrics with pink and brown that I had in my stash. I love how making an hourglass block with a stripe forms squares in squares in squares, so that was my only plan!

Once I had those big striped squares made, I got some solids to coordinate and started cutting squares. I put fusible on the fabrics first, so that when I had the squares all arranged, I could fuse them in place and keep going. It worked out well because I used Steam a Seam fusible, which is sticky after the paper is removed. It allowed me to arrange and rearrange the composition to my heart’s content….which I really did quite a few times. My graphic designer gene kicked in and I just kept composing for a full day, stopping and going back to try something else a few times throughout the day. When I got the composition I liked, I made myself sleep on it, to make sure I would like it the next day…and what do you know? I did!

Next step was to fuse the squares in place (scary, no more rearranging after that!) Then I machine zig-zagged around all the squares in matching thread. I didn’t want the stitching to mess up the composition. Nor did I really want the quilting to mess it up, so it is pretty understated quilting for my taste. I just quilted around the squares, then filled in the background with echo-quilting and some extra squares in a playful, geometric way.

I’m very happy with the way it turned out! I love the bias striped binding too, I just can’t resist those!! I had to use up almost all that striped fabric, but it was worth it. (And when I say use it up, I mean it! That incomplete square is that way because I didn’t have enough to get the fourth triangle out of the stripe in the right place!! But I liked the challenge and I think it adds to the piece!)

If you liked my entry, go see some more on the Flickr Pool: https://www.flickr.com/groups/1401824@N21/  You’ll be impressed, there are some really good ones!

The details: 28″ square quilt, started and finished in three days! Machine appliqué, machine quilting.