Finish Report! - Patrick's Houndstooth Blues

There once was an extremely helpful young man who helped a family tear down wallpaper and carry lots and lots and lots of big, heavy boxes – 26 of them holding quilting stash - onto a moving van. The quilter in this family felt it would be very nice to make a quilt for this young man out of the very materials he had helped load. So she found a hounds-tooth design and dug out pieces in colors he favored and sewed and sewed until she had a great (and somewhat Star-Trekkie)  “Thank You!!” to mail back to him. Thank you, Patrick, for all the help you gave us, from the Caulkins Family. Every bit of this quilt is part of the load you helped us move.

So goes the label for Patrick's Hounds' Blues.  (Guess I'm into storybook labels right now! I think I'll let that take me where it will while it lasts.)

This quilt was not on my UFO list. But I did hold myself to the rule of everything having to come from stash.  

Which is how it got to be so darned cool!

You see, successful houndstooths usually come from sticking to just two fabrics that are solids or read as nearly-solids. Well, I had that glorious 1/2-bolt of Kona Snow in my stash, but I couldn't find a single yardage of a good blue.  So I grabbed three that played well together and then sat down with a notepad and EQ to figure out how I could make the yardages work in the pattern.

Hmm. . .  Looking at the color layout, will it look good or will it lose cohesiveness?  Well - nothing gained unless I go for it!

So I went for it, even pressing my seams open like the younger crowd prefers. Yeah, it makes it lie nice and flat. But it severely limited me later. Won't spend time doing that again unless it's absolutely necessary.

And the forced fabric blend worked!  Those three blues together really make the design sing. When you see it in reality, it sparkles with a lot of life.

Had to splice some Hobbs Heirloom pieces to get big enough batting for this 60" x 60" beauty. Then, the biggest laugh was that rooting around for a good backing, I found a nice, big yardage of another great blue that would have easily accommodated the needs of the design. Heh! As good as the flimsy turned out, it was quite serendipitous that this piece was hidden from me at first.  :D

I had to compromise on the quilting I wanted to do because those open seams wouldn't let any ditchwork happen. 

1. It can't be secure to quilt on stitch junctions, particularly if the needle pierces the thread. 
2. It just sinks in and disappears.
3. There's the whole bearding-in-the-future issue.

But I do love how the wavy walking-foot lines worked out. These are 4" squares, and I simply waved down one seam, waved down another, and then eyeballed wavy lines to divide the rows into thirds. Perfect.  :)

And several of us laugh because that spacey blue in the mix evokes images that tickle the funny bones of us Trekkie nerds.

Can you see the ships?  LOL!!

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TGIFF * Link A Finish Friday at Richard's * Whoop! Whoop! * It's A Saturday Sharing Day