Madison Square

If it's March, it must be Sewing Camp. I had such a good time last year that I signed up for another three days of yakking and creative fervor in the Sewing Shack.

Most of the Sewing Shack crew are quilters, many of them very accomplished indeed (like Karen, a.k.a. the Capitola Quilter). I figured I'd bring a quilting project to work on so I could take advantage of their willingness to share their expertise with a noob like me.

Plus, I had promised The Man that I'd make him a "foot of the bed" quilt as a Christmas present. Yes, that would be last Christmas. So it was time for me to get to piecing. One of The Man's favorite artists is Hundertwasser. My aim was to come up with a quilt that was Hundertwasser-ish, which I think this kind of is.

The Man modeling the quilt

I used a pattern called Madison Square that I bought at The Stitching' Post in Sisters, Oregon while we were on vacation last summer. It wasn't until I started copying links for this post that I realized the pattern designer, Jean Wells, is the owner of the store. If you find yourself anywhere within a 50 mile radius of Sisters, stop by The Stitching' Post for a dose of inspiration. They have a yarn side and a fabric side.

I really enjoyed working with the pattern for this quilt. You end up getting a bunch of information about working with color, modern quilting and generally just loosening up and having fun with fabric.

I'm normally timid when combining colors or patterns. Improvisation is not my forte. I tend to like clear direction. This pattern was ideal for someone like me. It's kind of hilarious, really, the way she gently nudges you into loosening up. Before I knew it, I was just grabbing strips from a pile of fabric and going to town. Too long? Whack it shorter. Too short? Slap another piece on the end. It's all good!

She starts the instructions by talking you through choosing your fabrics, including a nice dose of color theory.

Then she has you cut long strips in three widths. I started out with my strips organized by color and width, but after 15 minutes of grabbing and sewing it looked like a rainbow snake had given birth on my work table.

Many, many fabric snakes

You can be happy-go-lucky for most of this project but precision still counts. Jean Wells urges you to hack your starting strips into parallelograms and join them up all catty-wumpus, but she has you true things up a key points so that you can join everything together in the end without driving yourself crazy.

I started the quilt on March 9 and finished it yesterday, March 24. It would have been quicker but I took a 10 day time out for a hellish sinus infection someplace in the middle there. Considering the last quilt I gifted to The Man took 5 years to complete, this was hella quick.

A very nice quilting lady at sewing camp showed me how to attach my walking foot (thanks, Michelle!), so I tried doing some machine quilting. It went surprisingly well! It was also surprisingly quick. I was all done with that part in a couple of hours, including a lunch break.

I did a little bit of hand quilting inside the colored squares. My hand quilting skills could use some major help. The machine quilting looks a thousand times better.

Binding shot

The pattern had you use scraps of your piecing fabric for the binding. That meant I didn't join the binding strips with bias seams, but it worked out just fine. I really like that narrow slice of color at the edge.

I used a fabric that looked like a topographical map for the backing. Nothing fancy there.

Peek of the backing

This quilt is supposed to sit at the foot of the bed, waiting to be pulled up as needed on especially chilly nights. We gave it a trial run last night and it worked out great.

I think I might have one more quilt in me. We could use a queen size one for the guest bedroom upstairs. I need a cooling-off period first though.

My pattern review is on PatternReview.com here