Kaleidoscope Quilt Finish!

Last night I finished my Kaleidoscope quilt and here it is:


Didn't it turn out nicely? I'm really pleased with this one, love the bright colours and LOVE the pattern. I did this quilt as part of Elizabeth's fab quiltalong. It's the first full size quilt I've done as a quiltalong and despite being a week late starting, I am impressed with myself that I managed to finish up on schedule.

The pattern was really great and I so enjoyed making it - all the more so for looking at what other people were doing with theirs. It's so amazing to me how the same pattern can look so different depending on fabric choices and design decisions. If you want to see more, just pop over and have a look at the Flickr group to see what I mean! I also learned lots making this quilt, not having done a lot of work with triangles before. Most important note to self - don't use paper templates again for cutting, after ripping back about 4 blocks a number of times to get my points matching. Even a millimetre or two here and there in your cutting makes such a difference on accuracy where you have so many points meeting.


Thanks to everyone who offered their advice on borders and binding. In the end, I decided to leave the quilt top as it was with no border, to maintain the illusion of those blocks whirling off the quilt. After posting the pics of the quilt top, I couldn't get the word whirligig out of my head. That, and the fact that its for a lovely baby boy influenced how I quilted it. I have a little 5 year old boy myself and completely love how he runs everywhere, with no pattern or meaning, round in circles, retracing his steps, covering about a million miles more than he really needs too. So I decided to free motion quilt it in a meandering, looping pattern, crossing over itself, looping around and around, going back and forth in no particular pattern, to mirror the whirling blocks and a little boy's motion, and I do think I captured that.


I think it works well and I hope my friend N likes it. I will definitely quilt in this looping style again, I love the effect.


I dithered about what binding to go with and dug around through my stash looking for something for quite a while, being too lazy to piece together all the strips necessary for a scrappy binding. I found this lovely blue fabric I had forgotten about and thought, with its red, white and green bubbles, it would work perfectly as the binding and I'm pretty happy with it.



I had this backing fabric in my stash and thought it was perfect for this quilt. Its actually from a small bolt of fabric I bought in IKEA and its a great gender neutral print which blends with whatever colour you put with it.


So, another quilt finished and this one is off to be washed and dried for that lovely crinkly texture before I post it off to N for baby O's room.


Quilt Stats:

Name: Whirligig Kaleidoscope
Made For: Baby O
Fabric: A mix from my stash including Riley Blake's Hooty Hoot, and All Star, Michael Miller Ta Dot, Ann Kelle's Urban Zoologie and Ready Set Go, Amy Schimler's On A Whim II, Saffron Craig's Beetle Bugs and lots more
Batting: Warm & White
Size: 36" x 48" approx
Quilting: Loopy free motion quilting
Pattern: Elizabeth's Kaleidoscope pattern

I'm linking this up to Sew & Tell over at Amylouwho, Summer Fair over at Gen X Quilters and