I spy a rainbow

 Hello everybody!

I have decided to finish up one of my long-term WIPs. Moving house has made me look at and sort through everything I have on the go and it means I am itching to finish up some stuff (as well as start another 50,000 things, but I am resisting for now). So I pulled this quilt top out of my pile.

I made this quilt several years ago, intending it as a cot quilt for my second son (who is now 10 years old, and way too big for a cot). It was the first big EPP project I did, I designed it myself and I mostly basted the hexies and stitched it together on my train commutes to work in 2017 (see these old IG posts from the time here and here). There's a fun print in every single hexie, the vast majority of which are fussy cut. Many of the fabrics were gifted from the generous community on Instagram, and as for the rest, this is where I started to build my lovely collection of bright, colourful fabrics that I love working with so much.

I really want to enter the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham again this year. I was thinking of entering my 2019 #focuscuttingsewalong quilt that I mentioned a couple of months ago. But even though I have made good progress piecing the top together, it is big, I don't have a quilting plan yet, and I am struggling to find more of the space fabric in the right colour to square up the borders. So the chances of me getting it finished in time have been rapidly diminishing. And while I personally love this quilt, I am not sure it has the visual impact for other people that would make it work as a show quilt. Additionally, it's not very clear which category it fits in - it doesn't seem to quite fit the criteria for either Traditional or Contemporary quilts.

But this Rainbow I-Spy quilt has the visual impact and original design to put it squarely in the Contemporary category. It's smaller (but still big enough to fit the show criteria), I bought the backing fabric years ago and I have a clear idea of how I am doing the quilting for it. So getting this finished and entered is a much more doable prospect.

So I have set to work on it! First up was choosing a border fabric to square it up. The consensus among my family was definitely in favour of the starry fabric rather than the plainer one.

I made bespoke paper pieces and EPP'd them on. I wanted them to have an extra quarter inch sticking out so I would have something to attach the binding to without covering up any of the coloured hexies.

The spaces in between the paper shapes on the long sides were so small I didn't make paper pieces for them, I just appliquéd strips. It doesn't matter that they look uneven now, I can square up later, and they'll be hidden by the binding anyway.

Then, a check against the window to find which paper I'd missed when removing them. There's always at least one. Also, the quilt looks like a stained glass window when you do this, which is always fun.

Can you spot it? It's here.

Next was making the quilt sandwich. I thread-basted.

So now it is in my hoop and the hand quilting has started! Wish me luck getting it finished on time!

Also the quilt really needs a name. I've been calling it 'Rainbow I-spy Hexies' but that seems really cumbersome. I could use something catchier.

Thanks for reading!