First Light Designs

Are you ready for more shots of my latest quilt, Tea Time on High Street, now that it’s back from the quilter? I can’t wait to show you!

Although initially unsure about this quilt as I was putting the blocks together (I really struggle making scrappy quilts), I have come to love it more every step along the way.

Take a look at the quilting motif:

Doesn’t it remind you of swirls of steam coming up from a hot cup of tea? That may be a bit of a stretch but it tickles me to think of it that way.

Here’s a look at the trimmed quilt, now measuring 55″ square:

I appreciate how the loops and swirls soften the straight lines in the quilt. It was quilted by Karlee of SewInspired2Day with an edge-to-edge design called “Soho.” I asked Karlee to use a pale grey thread so the quilting would blend into the background. The scale seems just right to me, adding texture without being too busy.

For the backing I sandwiched a row of leftover blocks between a pale grey polkadotted fabric from my stash. The grey fabric reads as a solid and really allows the quilting motif to stand out without being overpowering:

Confession: I had to stifle the impulse to head to the fabric store for some yellow fabric, which would have been my first choice for the backing. I could have used several smaller pieces of yellow from my stash but the front is so scrappy I wanted the back to be calm.

Here’s a close-up:

Now it’s on to the binding and label. If you’ve been following my progress on this quilt, you know I’m going to bind it in the same bright coral dotted fabric I used as a narrow border:

I think it will frame the quilt nicely. Even though there’s a lot of grey in this quilt, it still has a happy feel. And wouldn’t you feel happy if you were sipping tea at a stylish tea shop on High Street in London?

Here’s a sneak peek at the quilting on my latest quilt, Tea Time on High Street. After seeing a photo of a quilt Karlee at SewInspired2Day quilted with the motif “Soho” by Urban Elementz, I asked her to use it on my quilt, with what I think are spectacular results:

Karlee posted this shot on her Instagram account this afternoonand I nearly swooned! The lines on my quilt are so angular that I wanted something with loops, and this pattern is just what I was looking for: modern and a little edgy, with the added bonus of being a design with uniform spacing that would tame the bias edges on all those blocks.

My quilt will be ready to pick up tomorrow. I can hardly wait to see it! You can be sure I will be posting more photos as soon as the quilt is back in my possession. I’m thinking it needs to be bound in the same tiny dotted print I used in that half-inch contrast border. Yes?

And just like that, I have a finished quilt top:

I am loving it with the addition of the borders! I started with a half-inch strip of a print from my stash that is not part of the “High Street” line and then added a six-inch strip from the line that was not intended for the border at all.

Let me explain.

After starting this quilt with a Jelly Roll — 40 2½” strips of the entire “High Street” line of fabric — it occurred to me I might want to add borders. Having no yardage on hand, I did a search of the Internet and came up with one of the large florals that I thought would be perfect. I also found a small-ish floral print on a grey background that I thought would work nicely on the back. (I felt really lucky to find any yardage at all because “High Street” was very popular when it came out several years ago; there’s not much for sale anywhere now.)

Here’s a close-up of the two pieces I found:

Mercy! Given how busy the interior of the quilt turned out to be, can you imagine what it would look like surrounded by that large tangerine floral? Let’s not even go there!

When I auditioned the grey floral, I was amazed to see that it actually calmed down the busy-ness of the interior. At least that’s how it seems to me. Do you agree?

Here’s a close-up of the half-inch accent strip:

It reads as a solid from a distance but up close you can see it adds a subtle touch of texture against the striations in the grey containment border and the blossoms in the outer border.

The quilt top, now measuring 56½” square, is based on the free pattern Tea Time in Bali by Larene Smith. Initially I was toying with the idea of naming my quilt Ice Cream Social because the fabrics remind me of rainbow sherbet and fruit sorbets. They still do but the name doesn’t seem to fit anymore with my revised layout. What do you think of Tea Time on High Street?

After sewing the second of eight strip sets for my current Work-in-Progress, I had a small “aha!” moment (although maybe it should be called a “duh!” moment). You’ll remember from my last post that I’m working with a Jelly Roll, in this case 40 2½”-wide strips of fabric from Lily Ashbury’s “High Street” line . . .

. . . to make a quilt called Tea Time. The pattern by Larene Smith describes a clever way of sewing strip sets into tubes and cutting the tubes into triangles which open up to yield squares. The squares are then joined together to make a scrappy quilt.

Each strip set is made with five fabrics. Because of the manner in which the triangles are cut after being sewn into a tube, the blocks come out in one of two ways. The first way is a block containing (predictably) five strips, with the middle strip running through the center of the block, like this one . . .

I’m calling the ones cut this way the A blocks.

The B blocks contain six strips, because the middle strip gets cut in half and each half ends up on the outer edges of the block. There’s a seam bisecting the block, like this one:

Initially I had been quite spontaneous in choosing my strip sets, just wanting to make sure each set had a pink, yellow, orange, green, and grey strip. I assumed that the strip in the number 3 position would be in the middle of the block. It is — but as you can see from the photos above, that applies to only half the blocks. It didn’t dawn on me right away that the fabrics in the 1 and 5 positions would wind up in the middle of the block in the other half. Hello!

Armed with this new knowledge, I took a second look at my arrangement of remaining strip sets — in particular the fabrics in the 1 and 5 positions — and wound up rearranging them. Several times. So much for spontaneity!

Here are my final fabric combinations:

(These strips were cut from the end of the tubes after the triangles were cut and I had opened up the last seam.)

This is such a delicious combination of fabrics. You know what comes to mind when I look at these colors? Rainbow sherbet. Blackberry sorbet. Green tea ice cream. That led to my second “aha” moment: I’m going to name this quilt Ice Cream Social.