simply luscious

I love this quilt.

I love everything about

this quilt.

It is truly

simply
 luscious!

It all started back in January when Melissa 

mentioned quilthome.com's daily sales.

I visited Quilt Home

where I found Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks voile in citron 

on sale

for $5.96 a yard.

Seeing that it's normally around $15 a yard,

I snapped it right up.

I don't normally start a quilt with the backing first,

but - $5.96/yard AMH voile...

I had pinned a stars and squares quilt by Jolene from Blue Elephant Stitches

roughly a year ago,

and knew it would be the perfect pattern to go with my lovely backing.

I wanted bigger than a baby quilt,

so went with a 5x6 layout

(of 12" blocks)

so,

before quilting, washing,

and a tumble in the dryer,

the quilt measured 60x72.

Just perfect for a throw!

I chose 60 delicious fabrics that coordinated with the colors in the voile,

then paired them up

and decided if the pair would become a 16 patch block

or a wonky star.

As I mentioned,

the blocks were so much fun to make!

I layed out all the pieces (17) to a star block

and sewed and trimmed and pressed

until I had a completed block.

The 16 patch (strip pieced) blocks were mostly sewn up

as leaders and enders,

and went together super fast.

Because the quilt top was so luscious,

and the back was heavenly,

I decided to use wool batting.

I was hesitant to use the wool, because it felt like I was 'wasting' 

its luxuriousness

because I wasn't going to hand quilt it.

But then,

I remembered

the whole quilt was being created simply for the pleasure of it.

(I was originally going to name it 'Pure Pleasure'

but thought that sounded maybe a little too erotic for a quilt,

so when my friend, Nancy, referred to it as luscious  

well, I stole that as the name.)

And since the whole making of it was pure pleasure,

I decided it would be foolish of me

to not do at least some hand-quilting.

I pulled out my perle cottons and my silk threads,

and settled on the (silk) one that went best with my chosen binding,

netorious in teal,

(love netorious for bindings!)

and started hand-quilting in early June

I hand quilted diagonally across all 16 patches

and the corners of the star blocks

then free motion machine quilted  one huge flower in each of the remaining hexagons.

(the top and sides of each star block, with the hand quilting across the corners = a hexagon shape)

The 2,250 inches of hand-quilting took about 56 hours,

and the machine quilting took a little less than 2.

I attached the binding by machine,

and pressed and glue basted to the back last Friday

then spent time here and there over the next 6 days

hand stitching it down to the back.

I finished the binding yesterday morning,

then made a label (complete with a tiny 2" wonky star block :-) real quick,

sewed it on,

and tossed it in the wash.

Two hours later,

I pulled it from the dryer.

Heaven in a quilt ~ Simply Luscious.

No surprise ~ I'm joining the finishers over at Amanda Jeans :-)