{Throwback Thursday} Sparkling Gems

I made Sparking Gems in 2010. And then I forgot about it. 

This is one of those patterns I saw in a magazine and thought I could do. There was something with plastic templates that I can't quite remember... I think it was a trick to get out of cutting actual triangles. Back then that was appealing, but today I'd just pull out the Easy Angle and skip all of the extra steps and trimming.

I dug into my scrap bags and used all sorts of wild prints for this one. There was more than one moment of panic where I was sure that it wouldn't all pull together.

At 70x82", it's one of the biggest projects I've quilted on my Janome.  The backing was a thrift store sheet, but it was too narrow so I wound up adding strips from the matching pillowcases. The pieced border is from a floral shirt I found in the Goodwill bins and the binding is some extra that a friend of my mom's was throwing away because she'd made way too much for her own quilt.

I doubt that I'd make those same fabric choices today. Or a quilt with patches this large.

the scrap quilts

In addition to the baby quilts, I'm planning for 2013 to be the year of the big ambitious scap quilts. I've had the year of the scrappy baby quilt, the year I made more quilts than I knew what do to with, and the year of knitting big flat things that didn't have to fit anyone.  The past two years haven't had fun trends for me to discover after the fact.

 

This year, I'm planning ahead and tackling the big scrap quilts on my wish list.

 

There's Little Trips, which I jumped into without any planning at all.

 

And the Lego quilt, which I jumped into as soon as I saw the tutorial. This is about a quarter of the blocks I'll need to make it 60x60"

 

I've got about half the cheddar bowties I'll need to make that one 60x60" -- plus the pieced border because even though I'm not into borders, Bonnie's looked so amazing I'm going to follow her lead.

 

And Santa Fe String Star, which seems to have completely stalled out. I need two hundred (I think) of the string pieced diamonds. I've made...nine.

 

And I've got a growing list of other scrap quilts I want to start as soon as I've made more progress on these. To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.