Modern Quilt?

Here is a quilt, cuddle size, I made this week for my son's girlfriend.

It's 64" x 68" after washing, the perfect "cuddle on the couch" size.  I used 80/20 cotton batt and had not prewashed the fabric so I was curious about 3 things:

 

1. How much would the fabrics "run"?  I always use a Shout Color Catcher sheet when washing new quilts and this one came out light/medium blue SO the fabrics did run and I will tell the new owner to be sure to use a Color Catcher the next few times she washes it.  I dug deep in my fat quarter and smaller bins for blue, green and gray fabrics.  Some of these are old favorites, at least 15 years old.

 

2.  How much would the quilt shrink?  The package said 3% and that was about what happened.  The top was 67" x 71" when finished and the quilt came out of the dryer 64" x 68".  Fine with me.

 

3.  Would the shrinkage help to disguise the few areas of puckers on the back?  Yes, it did.  Now you have to look close and be picky to see them.  I had to baste this in thirds, on the dining room table, with help from the cats, so the back was not as tight as it should have been.  Lesson learned--the cats can't help.

I got the design idea from quilts on Pinterest and Flickr--I searched for Modern quilts and found a few easy but interesting designs I might try.  This was the first idea but as it grew on the design wall I didn't love it. So I added the gray strip in the middle and liked it much better.  The idea was to have an easy design so I could complete it quickly, and use as many blue, green and gray fabrics as possible. 

Free Motion Machine quilting is not my strong suit and that's putting it mildly.  I wanted to quilt this one myself and chose an easy wavy line design for the pieced strips.  While they are less than perfect, I concentrated on trying to keep the stitch length as regular as possible.  In the border I used a circular design, to mimic the circles in the border print.  Well, I had intended to do ovals but from the beginning I got circles so I just stuck with that.  It quilted pretty quickly, over two days and all in all, the quilting is OK and as a cuddle quilt, it's just fine. 

This week I'll quilt the X Block swap quilt and get my show entries ready.  Our guild show is October 11-13 and I have 4 to be sure are clean and have labels in place.  I always add a sleeve while applying the binding so at least that job is done.  Also have to get going on garments for Houston--that's only 6 weeks away!

Be sure to check out Judy L's Design Wall Monday to see what others are doing. 

Let's quilt!

Barbara