Floral Zebra

      Finally, the Zebra I made from Lynne's pattern was quilted. I am not sure what got into my head, but I entered it in Quilting Unlimited Show at the View Art Gallery in Old Forge, NY.  I have entered before, but everytime I submit a quilt, I see all the flaws. My machine quilting is hand guided and all I see are the errors. I don't want computerized quilting, but I feel judged by its perfection. I love the gallery in Old Forge and having a quilt hang there is a privilege but it is up to them. I realized when I was done, that the border prints don't match up good enough. Never thought of it when I was seaming the border. Too late now.

Detail

 

Back

 

Zebra with borders

      Because of the busyness of the Zebra stripes, I knew it needed a border. I tried a whole bunch of ideas but settled on a green diamond fabric. The color was perfect and the fabric had enough busyness to be part of the stripes. If I was making show quilts, the fabric would all have to be cut so that the diamonds all went in the same direction, but I am not a show quilter and I cut all the fabric strips WOF.

     I tried cornerstones instead of meeting those diamonds in the corners. I found four blues I liked and let my granddaughter (8) choose because she has a great eye for color and can explain why she chooses things. Now, I will have to find some backing that will work with this quilt and get it ready for quilting.

Choosing the cornerstones

All sewn on

     This is the Zebra pattern from Lynne Tyler

In her blog, she also talked about a new cutting mat. I needed a new one, so I bought the Rhino Mat, 2' x4' which has no lines and is translucent. The company was very good in delivering and I love it. It works so much better than the two mats I had there and cutting caught in the crack when cutting.

It went flat after this pretty quickly

Now it fits right next to my pressing mats.
This is a working studio, so there is lots of different stuff out
which bothers some people, not me.

 

Zebra spotting

      No, not the animal, the quilt Zebra. I was able to sew all the blocks and get it together. This pattern is from Lynne Tyler, from her Etsy shop. The variation of mine is the Firebird. I was asked to be a pattern proofer for the blocks. I have a whole slew of blocks that did not work in this layout, so I need to make an arrangement of those and just sew them together.  I have a green diamond border picked out and will show that in another post.

    After I sewed the half square rectangles together, I did use webbing for the whole top and it worked just fine, no mistakes. I learned I have a hard time cutting pieces when I have to repeatedly move rulers for each block to cut the sides. It fit together fine. I used fork pins to pin the HSR because they held the seam better than single straight pins. 

Layout when I knew I needed some other blocks as the purple/green ones were awful. I placed idea fabric to the side of the layout to see what I thought.

Layout with new fabric blocks added, others removed

All blocks sewn, border choice awaits

Fork pins at seam intersections so they meet 1/4" down from edge

How I pinned- flower pin pushed through where seam should meet, then fork pin inserted
on either side of the seam, and then flower pin pulled out.