If you
follow me on Instagram, you know that my life has been dominated lately by a cute little 4 month old. I’m happy to say that I’m figuring out this whole
becoming a mom thing and am finding a reasonable amount of time to sew (or shower, or cook, or think) during Elliot’s nap times.
When Ali Winston asked if I would be a part of her blog hop for her book
Quilt Lab (Stash Books), I immediately jumped on board.
Quilt Lab is a really unique concept, with quilt designs relating to science and math. The book is broken up into sections based on basic shapes like 1) rectangles, 2) angles and 3) circles. Each quilt design has a story to tell, relating to themes like calculus and binary code, to bring out the geek in all of us.
The project I chose to recreate is her beautiful Echo design, which is made from pieced curves of various sizes and tells the story of sound in motion. You can see
Ali’s version in pinks and purples the back cover of her book!
I made this quilt a little bit at a time over the course of four days, and it’s the same size as Ali’s version.
This binding is a black dot double gauze, and I actually serged the edges after I stitched the binding to the quilt front. This step is completely unnecessary, but I found it incredibly awesome! I think I’ll serge all of my bindings from now on, because the edge was evenly trimmed and so easy to manage.
The back is the same Parson Gray print I used
on my last quilt. I thought it echoed (get it?) the design on the quilt front quite nicely. For the front, I used a cream solid and some bright colors from my stash.
Although I’ve worked a lot with pieced curves before, Ali’s freezer paper method for inset circles and curves was new to me.
Reading alone wasn’t enough to help me wrap my head around this method, but I feel like a pro after a few passes. There was a lot of prep work involved (measuring, cutting, pressing,
gluing), but I’m happy to say that I’m now a believer in piec-lique!
I really loved Ali’s suggested quilting lines and how they resemble an echoing sound. After I marked the first “V” with a hera marker, I measured out some evenly spaced lines and quilted with a walking foot.
I don’t normally quilt straight lines or worry about precision, but I found it completely enjoyable and appropriate for this project. Ali, well done on this clever pattern and a fascinating quilting book!
Follow along with the Quilt Lab Blog Hop:
March – Rectangles
March 4: Ali Winston with Binary code
March 11: Knitty Bitties with her take on Fractal
March 18: Pink Stitches is mixing up Scattered
March 24-31: Link Party
April – Angles
April 1: Ali Winston with a free bonus pattern for you!
April 8: Canoe Ridge Creations will be modifying on States of Matter
April 15: Amy Lou Who knows her Calculus (does anyone remember 2Gether?)
April 22: Whipstitch has an awesome new molecule to show you for Molecular
May – Circles
May 6: I’m a Ginger Monkey gives us some Culture(d)
May 13: Lindsay Sews has an Echo
May 20: A Crafty Fox with a cool version of Aperture Science
May 27: Cut To Pieces and Ali Winston have teamed up for a joint free pattern!!
