Circus Quilt - A finished quilt

 I know this is not the best quilt I've ever made.  There are a few glitches; some of the points are off, some of my quilting isn't straight and some of the small squares would have been nicer if I'd fussy cut them.  And yet, despite all its shortcomings, I'm pleased with this quilt.

This has been an improvised quilt because I did very little planning and drawing and only bought the solids late on Saturday afternoon.  I'm pleased that in a short period of time I managed to make something that looks like something that was long prepared and mulled over.

The backing I bought only on Tuesday.  I had intended to buy some monkey fabric but the lady at my local patchwork shop picked out the large spots and these were a no-brainer.  The boldness of the dots with a white background works really well against the boldness and deep saturation on the front of the quit.  The backing is Michael Miller # CX-5291 Diddly Dot (what a lovely name!) and I'm going to purchase some more soon because I think it is such a dependable and worthwhile fabric for both the front and back of quilts.  I can envisage using it again shortly.

I love variegated thread for quilting and I also love a coincidence.  This quilt is destined for Australia so the thread by YLI called Great Barrier Reef by Luana Rubin is a perfect match.  Obviously, I doubt the quilt will be used in any scuba diving but the Australia theme was enough for me to put an extra smile on my face during the quilting.

I've learned a two key things along the way here.  Firstly, good solids can make a great contribution when you have only a small number of novelty or picture fabrics.  Secondly, scrappy binding is a fun way to use up fabric which can also make the quilt a touch more interesting.  I will definitely be doing this again in the future.

Circus quilt - WIP

I really love making a quilt from small amounts of novelty or patterned fabric and combining it with largely plain or sold fabrics.  I think that this combination makes the novelty  fabric pop when this fabric may be the smallest component.

A lady at work has asked me to make a quilt for a grandson who will be born shortly.  I had some scraps of fabric I bought cheaply last year which I thought would be suitable for this project, but I knew there would not be enough to make an entire quilt.  I think the fabrics are from Timeless Treasures.  I made a quick dash to my local patchwork shop and decided three largely solid fabrics would work well here.

I cut the circus fabrics and some solids into 2 1/2 inch squares and then pieced them together into these squares.  I was quite random about how I did this so none of the pieced squares looks the same.

Then I decided to bulk the quilt out my bordering the pieced squares with the solids.  I really like how these look together.  I think the solids really make the circus fabrics much more interesting and exciting.  On there own, they didn't really wow me; now I really quite like them.

I have quite a bit of the solid fabrics left so I am going to make my first scrappy binding.  I want this to be a project with very little left over.  I've had a look at some scrappy bindings on pinterest and I think they can work beautifully, I think especially if the scraps are not too long.  Unfortunately neither of the two local fabric shops in Sheffield opens on Monday so I cannot finish this today.  I haven't chosen the backing yet so that will be a fun shopping decision on Tuesday.