Purple Zig Zag Quilt

Since it's March 25 and it's snowing outside and I haven't really gotten dressed in three days, I thought it might be high time to share this quilt I finished back in August. August 2012, a time when the sun was shining and I had enough life in me to finish things.

I made it for our best friends' ten year anniversary and finished it just in time to give it to them without taking pictures. I was too excited to take pictures, as I usually am with sewn gifts. Anyway, they liked it. I think they still do. It looks pretty good as a throw blanket in their stylish place. Then I stole it back from them last week and took some pictures, because when you blog you think you have a good excuse to do weird things like that.

I really love the colors of this quilt. I first blogged about my fabric selections and using "triangles on a roll" here. You put a cut of paper over the 2 fabrics you want to make HST's from and then just sew where the lines tell you. Cut them apart and you've made a lot relatively quickly and really accurately. You just have a bunch of paper to rip off now. Still worth it for a quilt that is made of them entirely. We have a class at Sewn Studio that teaches this quilt, so we were all kind of learning how to use the product together.

After all the HST's were done I put them together randomly for the most part. I think it turned out great that way, plus trying to control where everything ended up would not have been enjoyable for me. The only thing that worried me at first was if that navy chevron was too much with the rest of my low-volume prints. But once the whole thing was together, I loved the effect that chevron print made. Totally would have been a bore without it.

The top only uses 8 quarter yards plus 2.5 of the background solid I think. So for the back I just put together all the quarter yards of those prints I had left. (Since I usually stash half yards.) The quilting is a simple double diagonal grid. This was the quilt that made me realize my walking foot sucked. It's not terrible quilting, but after I shelled out the $70 for a good walking foot after this, I quickly realized it wasn't great quilting either. Sometimes it's a relief to know it was your tools that sucked ass and not you. 

The binding is that Moda pre-made single fold bias from Sewn that I loooooove to use so much. Makes that end-of-the-quilt-I-just-really-want-to-be-done-with-this part go much faster. 

This little sprite in Santa jams thinks it's pretty cozy. Maybe it's time to start on one for her near-future big girl bed?