Seaside Stitches: JDRF Auction Quilt

Masquerade

54" square

Completed 4/23/12

This was a labor of love and I'm so happy that it is done, delivered and has been well received. I hope it nets a large sum for JDRF RI at the auction on Saturday.

The most time consuming part of the process was scanning and cleaning up the masks that were drawn or colored by kids associated with the organization. I'm a beginner in Photoshop, so I'm sure it took much longer than it should have.

The images were then printed on Photo Fabric from Blumenthal Craft. It is sold in packages of 6 sheets and retails for $14.99 for the 100% cotton poplin. I was able to use coupons for 40% or 50% off at ACMoore, which made this much more affordable. The product works great and I highly recommend it for small jobs.

Plan A for setting the blocks failed miserably. I started paper piecing diamond shapes for the sashing in the gala's theme colors of pea green and purple. It just didn't do anything for the drawings.

Plan B: The rainbow fabrics all came out of my stash. The hourglass corner stones pieced up quickly from Kona white and charcoal. I am very happy with Plan B!

On to quilting. There is straight line quilting in the ditch with gray thread. My loopy swirly stipple in white thread is in the background of each drawing.

Pumpkin seed quilting in the sashing and corners is done in a progression of rainbow colors. I didn't want to use yellow thread on the yellow fabric, so I bumped the colors down one. Purple thread on pink, pink thread on red, red thread on orange, and so on. This turquoise thread is my favorite!

More thread color changes in the border. I love this!

(I'm not showing you the corners where I went askew.)

The binding was done completely on the machine. The only thing I had to hand stitch was the bottom edge of the hanging sleeve.

What to do with all those beautiful green and purple batiks from Plan A? Put them on the back!

I didn't do any quilting through the drawings, so the masks pop out. I think you can see that on the back and in the detail shots above. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it's done and gone.