Happy Memorial Day to you! I hope you're having a great weekend so far, celebrating family and those who've served our country. I'm stealing a few minutes of quiet independent reading time to put together a quickie, long-overdue blog post for a recent finish - Boxed In!
Boxed In is a twist on a traditional nine-patch block applying a change in scale as well as playing around with the symmetry of the nine-patch. There's two layers of nine-patches going on here, as well - a giant nine-patch block, which is built of asymmetrical nine-patch blocks. I will be writing a pattern for the asymmetrical nine-patch block itself as well as some ways to utilize it coming up soon, so stay tuned for that.
I dug into my scrap box for this quilt, not only with the prints, but with the whites as well. I used four different shades of white, log-cabin style, around the giant nine-patch block. I so often ignore my scraps of white because it's tough to match them up, but I actually like the subtle tonal changes of white throughout the quilt, so I will definitely try that again on another quilt in the future. My favorite of the nine-patch blocks is positively the center one, with the yellows and golds. It brings a nice spot of sunshine, and attention, to the center.
I got a little crazy with the quilting on this one - with my trusty favorite shade of Aurifil white #2024, I used a different quilting style in each of the four white logs. There's some wavy lines, some zigzag, some Ls, and some boxes. In the nine-patch area, though, I went super simple, with some random straight lines. I think it gives some really interesting texture to the finished quilt. I kept the binding really minimal as well, using one of the white fabrics I used for the logs. I like the blended look that it gives to the finished quilt. I often choose a binding that's got a lot of contrast, but I'm really digging how soft a matchy-matchy binding looks. I might just do this kind of binding a bit more often :)
Quilt Stats
name: Boxed In
size: 50" square
pattern: Asymmetrical 9 Patch, coming soon
fabrics: assorted whites, assorted scraps in purple, aqua, gray, and gold
quilting: wavy lines, zigzags, L's, boxes and straight-lines, all free-motioned on my Juki with 50 wt Aurifil #2024
Now, I have to confess something: I lost this quilt for a bit of a while. About two weeks, to be exact. It traveled safely to a few lectures with me, and then when packing up for my last trunk show, I couldn't find it. If you've read my blog before, you probably know that I am really good at "putting things away" and by that I mean, putting things in places that make zero sense. I inherited that lovely trait from my dad, who we called the "Mad Mover." At first, I fretted that I left it behind at one of my lectures, but that wasn't the case. I tore my sewing room apart looking for it, as well as my guest room, where I store many of my quilts. All with no luck. It wasn't until this past weekend that I decided to unfold quilts as I looked through them to search for this quilt that I found the darned thing. It was folded with the backing side out, and I didn't remember using that particular print for the backing, so I looked right past it before. Thank goodness I found it, because I was seriously thinking I might have to remake it - which wouldn't be a tragedy, but gosh, it sure would be frustrating to have to remake something I misplaced!