Meghan's Bull's Eye Quilt

OK - where is she? who has kidnapped Mary so that she can't write in her blog???? No one - well, I guess that means that Mary has been neglecting her little ol' blog lately... sorry.

First of all, my beloved Kansas University Jayhawk's basketball team lost in the NCAA Men's Finals last night. Even though they lost they played their heart out for the entire tournament and are winners in my mind. It has been so much fun watching the team go so far in this year's tournament and now I can finally grow out my fingernails that have been chewed to nubbin's in the last two weeks. So many close games!!

A lot has happened since I came back from Florida hopefully most of the high points will show up in subsequent blogs. I had two quilting retreats in March, yes two retreats. It was great and I definitely could do that more often because I just love getting away for the weekend and quilting, laughing, shopping and eating junk food with my girlfriends! Our preference is a 4-day retreat : Thursday - Sunday. You can really get so much more done when you have two full days to sew.

For several months now I have been working on a quilt for Meghan, my 28 year-old daughter. The main body of the quilt is the Bull's Eye block with 4-color squares for the border. The fabrics are from Amy Butler and, because I needed so many different fabrics, some just closely resemble her fabrics. The reason this quilt has taken so long is partly due to the fact that the colors and patterns are very wild and vivid and it has been a struggle to keep things in line, so to speak. It has been a huge learning experience for me and not everything has been done exactly to my liking but I think the end result will be a fun and colorful quilt.

With such wild blocks I felt it was necessary to put a sashing in to give the eyes a rest while viewing the quilt. I looked for over a month for the perfect sashing and finally found it when I was about to give up and use something predictable like a plain green or orange. The sashing is a slightly darker green background with small stripes that match the colors in the quilt perfectly. It is a little muddier than I would like but it works - as with life, not everything is a perfect match.

Ironically, I did end up deciding upon non-patterned fabrics for the final border because I didn't want to introduce a new Amy Butler fabric and didn't want to use any of the fabrics that were already in the bulls-eye blocks. I am using 4-color squares, or quarter square triangles, not sure what to call it using the colors of burnt orange, green, orange/red and periwinkle. Sounds weird but I think it will be just the ticket for the last edges of the quilt. I will add a picture of the border squares as soon as i have one made up.

When I asked Meghan if she wanted it professionally quilted or if she wanted me to quilt it she said that she wanted it quilted by me - so sweet but it is a very large quilt to do on my domestic machine. I have done a queen sized quilt and know that I can manage that so what I am going to do is quilt it before i add the border so that it will be smaller. The batting and backing will be the actual final size and I will have to roll and pin them to keep them out of the way. We'll see how it goes...

Close Up of Meghan's Bull's Eye Quilt