The very exciting Kings Puzzle quilt was brought out again last week.
The quilt guild was lucky enough to receive a presentation about “something blue” by a local quilter – Barb Eikmeier.
During that presentation Barb showed a blue & white version of the King’s Puzzle quilt by Lois Hattleberg. Lois & Barb are friends.
Lucky me that I was able to show my red and black version of the same quilt top at the meeting Barb attended, so she got to see the version I made.
And I opened my mouth & said something about making borders at the retreat the following weekend (last weekend from this time frame).
So I brought the top, and an assortment of deep red fabrics, and my graph paper.
The first evening of the retreat, just doing some drawing & some thinking I think I figured out what I want to do for borders for this top that will compliment & hopefully not detract from the wonderful piecing of this top.
Since the Kings Puzzle quilt in a bargello style quilt, mimics the style of an orange peel design, I looked at the red fabric with orange peel pieces that also reminded me of a cathedral windows quilt setting.
And I have made a cathedral windows style quilt with the 10 minute block method before!
So I came back to this quilt on the last day of retreat (had a few other things on the ‘had to do’ list first), and started thinking & playing with scale & design.
I have cut the center pieces of the cathedral window blocks, I actually am going to make a change to my first cuts so I can border the cathedral windows differently on some blocks, but I am still using the bright red fabric in the centers of the blocks.
I am going to make an outer border & an inner border of red that have some of those cathedral window blocks in between.
I wanted the very outer border to have a darker red border. I have two acceptable options.
Option #1 – the best option right now.
A close up of the same fabric (colors slightly off due to flash etc). This is what I like best right now still.
But this next fabric would be nice too, I think. I don’t have enough (yet) of this fabric, but I like the darkness of it more. But not so much the chevrons (doesn’t work as much in THIS design. Or the thing seems very purple to me too.
I have been thinking about next year’s regional quilt show, and wondering in the back of my mind if I can push through all the way to finishing this quilt to get it done before the deadline for that show. This is one that speaks to people a lot.
If not, I will try to enter my exothermic wonders quilt in the regional show. If they let me. The finish date for “Exothermic Wonders” was Christmas 2012 so by June 2015 it will be 2.5 years old which is .5 years out of the ‘acceptable quilt age’ for this particular show. So maybe not.
Better press on with King’s Puzzle.
