Coast to Coast Quilt, June 3, 2016

While making the Illusion Quilt, I had many questionable moments of why hadn’t I discovered my love for quilting years ago.  I soon realized, it doesn’t really matter much in the scheme of things and I quickly jumped in full steam to this hobby for which there seems to be a never-ending shortage of time for in my world (I’m sure I am not alone in this regard).

The finance side of me created a spreadsheet of all the fabrics I have been buying, including what fabric I had purchased over the past several months (A lot.  Though I won’t go so far as to say too much), auto-calculations for how much fabric I need to make my own binding for each project and auto calculations from that information as to how many strips I need, how much background fabric, what pattern I was inspired by (if I was when I bought the fabric), and on it goes.   OH the Places I’ll Go with that spreadsheet.  It helped me realize I need to sew faster as there are so many projects waiting to become quilts!

But I digress, as I started on my second quilt straight away for my niece Kristina, who underwent not one but two surgeries to have a brain tumor removed.  She is by far one of the strongest, smartest and beautiful 21 year olds I know.  She gets her strength from my super strong sister Debbie.  I am delighted she is responding well to the new trial she is part of and know she’ll love this quilt when Fall sets in and things cool down in Connecticut.

I named it Coast to Coast to reflect my being on the West coast and Kristina being on the East coast.  It reminds me of her, with the strong lines, resilient points, and beautiful colors.  The quilting thread used by Tisha Cabral for the final quilting is variegated and pulls the teal/aqua/green and cream colors from the quilt together.  I love love this quilt!

Coast to Coast (traditional quilt name is Depression Quilt)  is made up of half square triangles.  I didn’t use a pattern, though I layed out various patterns before deciding on the square points.   I started with 5′ squares cut from various fat quarters or yardage.  Here were a couple of the ideas I played around with before deciding on the points (and eliminated the red).

I found the cool fabric for the back at Joanne’s Fabrics which was a perfect match with the fat quarters I used.   Total coincidence as I was going to opt for a plain backing until I saw this!  I bound the quilt with a light gray fabric with gray, little yellow (think cream) and varied teal polka dots.  This came together quite nicely I think.  Nice to have a super tall husband to hold up the quilt for pictures though I’m not the photo shop gal most bloggers are and left his fingers in the shot!

I can’t wait to finish the label – I am going to needlepoint the usual “To, From, Name and Date” data on it. I made the label with left over HSTs from this quilt and attached it to the back.   I decided to have the label put on pre-quilting as it feels more finished to me with the quilted lines over the label itself.

The Coast to Coast process was super fun and I am already on to my next quilt  which I’ve pre-named Sun Showers!