Finished!

 

Oh my goodness, I finished this quilt! It has been a long time in the making, so this feels like a huge accomplishment. 

 

First, a disclaimer: I don't have a good place to take good photos of a large quilt face on -- so this morning I tried some -- ahem -- alternative angles. So, these are pretty dreadful photos, but I am so excited to have this done that I am posting these anyway! 

This started as a "leaders and enders" scrap project. If you aren't familiar with "leaders and enders", Bonnie Hunter will explain it all here. Basically, you have pieces on hand and use them for the starting and stopping stitching scraps when you are sewing something else. I sewed scraps into four-patches for ages, as I was sewing on other projects, before I started thinking that I might have enough to put together into an actual quilt.

I'd seen a picture of a version of this quilt, then tracked down the magazine because I fell in love with it.  (It's American Patchwork & Quilting, April 2015 issue.) But I worked with the scraps I had on hand, which were 1 1/2 inch strips and 2 1/2 inch squares. Here's the basic block unit: 

 

 It's two four-patches and two neutral squares, sewn into another four patch. (Again, excuse the rotten photo.) I decided that I wasn't going to stress about how "neutral" the neutral square was -- if it was more white than color, I used it and didn't worry about where it landed. Laying them up on the all looked like this:

Then this. I really got excited when it got to this stage.

 And then it was a whole top! 

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll know that I started machine quilting with an idea that seemed brilliant at the time -- but gosh, it took a lot of stitching and took forever. I wanted raised squares to show in the neutral squares between the colored rows, so I created them in the negative quilting space.

It's subtle but it really is visible on the actual quilt, and I'm glad I kept on. 

 

I used some rather fun sewing machine fabric on the back (thanks to good old 5 Bucks A Yard, where I get a lot of backing fabric), along with more scrap strips.  

 Here's another weird shot of the finished quilt. Now I need a name so I can label it. Any ideas?