Finally Finished: Betty's Retirement Quilt

The first finish of 2016! The quilt has finally been gifted and I can now do the full reveal:

Betty was Hubster's supervisor the entire time he worked for the county school district. She was wonderful to him (as she was to all of her employees), and he adores her. She was with the school district for 46 years--which is an amazing amount of time to spend in one place! 

Until the quilt was gifted, Betty and I had never met--we had talked on the phone, but that was it. Not knowing Betty's tastes or style, I was in a quandary as to what type of quilt to make for her. Phillip noticed what he thought was a Vera Bradley bag that she had been gifted this past Christmas and it was primarily purple, so he suggested using purple in the quilt. You saw a few months ago where I started the quilt and made the blocks:

The original plan was for one solid purple border. After the blocks were pieced I changed my plan on the borders and included a lavender-ish pieced inner border. That dark purple is a very old Kaufman fabric we carried at the shop. It looks like a hand dyed fabric, but it's actually printed. All the other fabrics in the quilt are batiks.

This is where I got my lesson in using precuts--not all precuts are equal! I had a jelly roll from Moda, a strip roll from Anthology Batiks, and a Tonga Treats from Timeless Treasures. The Anthology strip roll looked as if it were hand cut and the strips were extremely uneven. By the time I finished piecing the quilt, I was wishing I had bought yardage and used my die cutter to cut the strips.

The pattern, I think, is a variation of the Patience Corners block. I saw a photo of a quilt one day on a quilt forum and this was it. I charted it out in EQ.

Quilt rendering in Electric Quilt

Quilting the quilt: This one had me stumped. I tend to do a dense quilting design and I felt it would be lost in this one. I settled on wavy lines with interspersed bubbles, leaves and hearts. Now that it's done I'm wishing I had done a more dense design, but that's just me. I'm adopting the "done is better than perfect" mantra.

Glamour shots:

The outside shots do not show the saturation of the colors in this quilt; they are much more vibrant. Here's a shot of the finished quilt inside the Bottoms Up! Studio:

Oh, well.

We were finally able to give it to Betty tonight. She loves it! And I'm sorry I don't have a photo of her with it...I have a hard time thinking about taking a photo when I'm gifting a quilt!

Quilt stats:

Finished size: 60" x 82"

Batting: Hobbs 80/20

Threads: Top is WonderFil Tutti #23 Sea Blue and Mettler 50wt #557; bobbin was Fil-Tec Glide Magna Delights in Bright Blue.

Go quilt!