Ode to Triangles....part two

I promise, I will not be grumpy tonight about the triangles. Well, maybe only a teensy, tiny bit. I was encouraged and not a little bit comforted by all the comments I got on my last post; its good to know I'm not the only one who finds triangles a complete PITA.

I set about the piecing on Friday night. All those rows. It seemed to take a long, long time. Then I pressed them. And remembered the trimming...all those little dog ears that needed to be trimmed back. So I did that. I may have muttered a bit about it under my breath and then remembered my decision to embrace the process after the last post, so I stopped muttering and pasted a smile on my face.

Then it was time to piece the rows together, to assemble the quilt top. And I remembered what I really, really dislike about working with triangles. It's so blindingly obvious and in your face that I hadn't even thought about it, stupid as that may sound.

Matching the points.

I made a decision not to freak out about it. Unless they were absolutely apallingly off (half an inch or so out), I wasn't redoing them. That did give me a certain freedom, and I rattled through the assembling at a ferocious rate. Given how un-exacting I was being (I still was pinning, don't get me wrong, but I wasn't being over the top about it), they came out surprisingly well. I think I only had to rip back 2 points in the whole thing; pretty good going. But I'm not going to show you close ups. There's a lot of slightly cut off points in there, as well as slightly off matching. I doubt anyone will notice though once its done.

 

Then I pressed (and cursed my careless seam matching again when the seams weren't going the way I wanted them to). And then I shook it out, in all its glory and fell utterly and totally in love.

 

I'm sorry the pictures are not great - the weather here thinks it is in monsoon country apparently so there's no getting outside for nice light. But I think you can see how it works. I really was worried about those grey triangles grouped together, whether that would work or just look stupid. Possibly I should have made a big triangle out of the low volume ones but maybe that would then look too even and regular, I did want it to be random so as to draw the eye through the quilt. The low volume totally breaks up the look of the quilt - I did not want even rows, I wanted something with movement and depth and I think that I've achieved that. The brightness of the print fabrics is not jumping out of this picture, trust me when I say that the colours are absolutely vibrant and bright and beautiful in real life.

I love it. I really, really love it.

Now its time to start thinking about getting this baby finished for the birthday girl on Wednesday. (Not a hope, but sure I'll keep trying.)  I have some Michael Miller Zoology fabric in pink and grey for backing, but only a yard and a half, so I need to size it up a bit as this top measures about 72" x 48". I'm considering chopping up a pink flat sheet I have if I can't find enough fabric in my stash. And I need to think about quilting now. I can't face wrestling with my machine to do straight lines on the diagonal, its being very temperamental at the moment. I was thinking some sort of FMQ - maybe with loopy loops in the white triangles? Suggestions and inspiration most most welcome.