All 36 Deco 3B Blocks Completed! Woo Hoo!

Hello and happy Monday!  I am delighted to share that I finished all fourteen of the remaining 3B (in Kona Solid Indigo and Willow green) for my Deco quilt last night!  I am especially proud of how much I got done because I got called in for jury duty on Wednesday and didn't get any sewing done on Thursday, either.

Deco Bed Quilt Blocks 1, 2, and 3B Completed

Those two blank rows near the center of the quilt need eighteen of Block 3A, which is nearly identical to Block 3A except that there is one more 1" square patch and, in my version of the quilt, Block 3A will combine the Indigo (dark navy) background fabric with Kona Solid Thistle, the lighter of the two purple fabrics used in my log cabin blocks for this quilt.  Sensible quilters will have followed the faster strip piecing instructions in the Deco pattern instructions from Lo & Behold, but I have cut out individual patches for all of my blocks for reasons I've rehashed in previous blog posts.

Nine 3A Blocks Ready for Chain Piecing

My method for staying organized while chain piecing those last 14 3B blocks worked well for me, so that's how I'll be piecing the 3A blocks.  In the photo above, I've laid out the 3A block with nine  fabric patches in each stack.  Once I've completed the first nine blocks, I'll lay out the last nine blocks in the same way.

Custom Quilting Marybeth's circa 1984 UFO + Cranking Out Deco Blocks

Happy Monday, everyone!  Congratulations to the Eagles fans out there, and my condolences to the Chiefs fans.  Not that I watched even five minutes of the Superbowl -- I'd rather sit in my laundry room for four hours watching the clothes go round and round than sit in front of a television watching grown men run around and clobber each other over a weird-shaped, ugly ball.  So HAH!  My husband and sister-in-law are from Philly, however, so while they were up at the house cheering their team I snuck off to the quilting studio to start quilting the borders on my friend Marybeth's UFO sampler quilt that dates back to 1984.

Wasatch Bella Bella Feather Border and Corner Quilting Design

When Marybeth showed me these blocks and told me the story of the quilt, I promised her that if she finished the quilt top I would custom quilt it for her.  This was supposed to be a "big boy" quilt for her son Nathan, who is now a married father in his forties.  The blocks are hand pieced and hand appliqued in neat, even stitches and it would be an intolerable shame if the quilt never got finished at all.  

Challenges for Marybeth included finding suitable border fabric, because she didn't have enough left of the fabrics from the blocks and may have used the fabric for some other project over the years.  Although there is no purple in her quilt blocks, I think the solid purple border fabric she chose works really well because it's the right value and hue to coordinate with the other colors well.

Challenges for Rebecca included coming up with quilting designs that would complement the vintage 1980s style of the sampler blocks and fabric without overpowering them, and without skewing too modern or too formal.  Another challenge was remembering how to lay out and size a border design to fit the quilt border and to accommodate for the quilt drawing up during stitching...  Too bad I didn't revisit this Q-Matic border quilting tutorial on Bernina's We All Sew blog before I loaded this quilt.  I loaded, basted, and did all of the stitch in the ditch quilting with monofilament thread a couple of months ago, and I did not remember Bernina Educator Denise Jones' tips about marking the center and quarters of the long sides of the quilt to make placing the border designs easier.  Next time!  Here's a shot of Marybeth's quilt on my frame where it languished for weeks, waiting for me to pick a design and get up the courage to start quilting it already!

Post-SID, Pre-Border Quilting Paralysis Syndrome