Quilty Pleasures: Finally, A Finished HST Overload Quilt

Last year I was preoccupied by Amish quilts and quilts with triangles, in particular. A triangle quilt (or two) was on my agenda and I couldn't let that idea go.

An Accuquilt Go cutter languished in its bag under the cutting table and I'd been wondering what the first project would be. I bought the 3.5 inch die and stamped out some solid triangles for something Amish-looking, but when I saw the HST Overload quilt by Rita Hodge of Red Pepper Quilts, I knew this was the one. 

Ann, owner of ThreadBear, our local quilt shop, helped me choose the brightest fabrics in the store, focusing on Kaffe Fassett collective fabrics, small checks and florals to calm things down just a bit along with Moda Grunge fabrics and other blenders that read like solids. We went just a little crazy: there are about 30 different fabrics in there, plus or minus.

I took the triangles and my new little 1954 Featherweight to Cali this past July when we visited Trudy and Pat and by the time we went home, I had sewn those triangles together and even started on  a load of half square triangles ready to go. That was the easy part.

Laying it out was fun, and I enjoyed sewing the triangles into patches into squares.

What I hadn't anticipated were all the seams to match when I sewed the long diagonals of on-point blocks together. I measured my progress in Hulu television shows: pinning and sewing took one Elementary (42 minutes) on the longest seams. Layout was somewhat random, kind of like I am.

So here's the rest. The photo below shows HST Overload lying on the snow. You can see that the corners are not square, which is on purpose, really.  There are instructions in the pattern if one wants to square it off, but I wanted the angled corners.

Here's another look at the corners. The binding fabric is a swirly multi-colored stripe I bought at a store in Arizona.

The zigzag print backing was on sale at ThreadBear, so I scored!

Quilting was a loopy paisley done by long arm quilter Beth Glass, who runs On the Mountain quilting retreats.

So I haven't finished with half square triangles just yet. Those Amish bright solids with black are turning into something quite interesting. More about that later!

Quilty Pleasures: HST Overload Quilt Almost Finished!

We are almost to the first finish for the year, with just the handwork on the binding left to do.

It's the HST Overload Quilt by Red Pepper Quilts, and when it's totally done, I will give you a better look. (Get your sunglasses ready.)

Quilty Pleasures: HST Overload Quilt

Man, oh, man! It's been a long time since I've written a quilt post, but I'm seriously stoked about the quilt I'm making right now.

Here's HST Overload on my back-of-a-tablecloth design wall. I've cropped out the blue painters' tape attaching it to the drywall, so it looks much tidier than in real life.

 I've had the blocks completed for about three weeks now, and they sat patiently while I dithered about where to lay it all out. At first I was going to do what I've done in the past, which is lay a tablecloth, flannel side up, on our bed which is upstairs. It's a good workout going up and down the stairs, but I decided not this time. I need a design wall in the sewing room, thus the taped up tablecloth.

In the next couple weeks I hope to have a real design wall, using this neato tutorial from The Quilting Edge blog. Instead of batting, though, I'll use a gray flannel sheet because Kaffe Fassett likes gray instead of white for his design wall. Less glaring, is one of his reasons. If it's good enough for Kaffe, well, you know the rest.

When the quilt is together, I'll update you all.