Beadlust

Boston Commons Quilt ~
In Progress!

Before beads, in the 60’s and 70’s, I made a number of full-sized bed quilts and quite a few baby quilts, mostly using appliqué techniques. Since then, I’ve only made two wall-sized quilts, plus I've used log cabin quilting techniques for extending beadwork for handbags.

About a year ago, I joined Rainshadow Quilting Arts, the local quilt group on San Juan Island. It’s such a warm and friendly group of talented women, with interests and experience in many types of quilting. How could I not get hooked?

At our fall quilt camp last year, Kitty Sorgen was sewing the binding on her Boston Commons Quilt. Here’s two pictures, one showing the whole quilt, one a detail so you can better appreciate her fabric choices.



Smitten with Kitty’s quilt, another member, Kris Phillips asked Kitty to teach her how to do it and to help her with fabric selection. As soon as I saw what Kris had made, I was over the top ~ with wanting one, of course. Here is the one Kris made, and a detail showing her fabrics.



Now this is not a difficult quilt to make… nothing like one of Allie’s crazy quilts or Debra’s pieced lone star quilt. All it is, really, is cutting 3.5 inch strips of fabric, sewing the strips together, cross-cutting the sewn strips into new strips, and sewing the new strips together. If it wasn’t for my back giving out at the cutting table, it should be possible to complete the top for a generous king-sized quilt in about three long days.

The quilt is worked from the diagonal in both directions. Here is a grid that I colored with approximates of my fabric colors. The grid came from this fabulous site, full of free grids of various types that can be sized exactly how you want them and then printed. I’m nearly finished with the sewn strips, and to the stage where I’ll sew those long diagonal strips together to complete the top.


Here is a picture of my quilt in progress. It’s complete out to fabric number 10, and I’ve started adding the next set of strips.


I’ll try to take and post a picture (later) of it at it’s current stage of completion, which is out to fabric number 18, with only three to go. By the way, the fun part of this quilt is selecting the fabrics. Unlike Allie’s recent post about the enjoyable, on-going process with her crazy quilts, for me the sewing part is pure “character building.” Maybe I should try crazy quilting. It would be more like improvisational bead embroidery, which I adore doing, and which is always an absorbing process. Yet, no doubt about it, I will love having my new Boston Commons quilt on our bed!

Does anyone have a good (tried and true) recommendation for a reasonably priced machine quilter? If so, please email me: robin[AT]robinatkins[DOT]com. Thanks ;>)