If you can't beat 'em...

In case you haven't heard, Amy is hosting a Blogger's Quilt Festival.



 
I'm entering "Jelly Pops," the quilt I made last summer. I found the "Fresh" jelly roll at my all-time favorite quilt shop, The Ice House, on vacation in northern Michigan -- it was too bright and happy to pass up (that, and I think it may have actually had my name on it. I think the clerks do that every summer just to keep me coming back).

I experimented with a couple different wacky, complicated blocks before I decided to Just. Go. Simple.

I have made Overthinking an art form. Sometimes I have the ability to check myself, most of the time not.

Anyway, the jelly roll quickly became this, which is one of my favorite pictures:

After finishing the top back home, I knew I had to have the butterfly print for the backing. The combination of those oranges and yellows with the scrolly blue just put me over the moon, and the orange binding just made it all pop. One more trip Up North to plug money into Michigan's economy, and I got to here...

...which is where it remained for quilte a long time. It took a while to get that binding on --  I'm not very fast at hand sewing, and as you all know have a limited attention span. Then there were all those loose threads to tie up, which took another few months to attack.

Eventually, it was done. I took it down to my friend Ellen's last week to take pictures in her courtyard. She has better light than anywhere at my house, not to mention cooler furniture.

I'm pretty proud of this quilt, mostly because somewhere along the way I decided to scrape the rust off my tech writing skills and record the construction process. It's harder than it sounds, folks -- pattern writing involves wrangling every stray step most of us do intuitively into coherent, accurate instructions. I didn't realize how much of the piecing process is just in my head until I sat down to write, or and how many assumptions I made about measuring until after I sent it out to a few willing guinea pigs volunteers. I got some great feedback and pictures of some beautiful finished products, so I know that in spite of some flawed measurements, the instructions actually worked. Hooray!

The pattern tweaks are still on my To-Do list (surprise, surprise), but I hope to revisit them soon. Thanks for all those who helped in its production! Thanks also to Ellen's husband Ed, who stole away from watching Blackhawk hockey highlights so I could get a picture of the entire quilt.