Constructed and hand quilted by me.
Phew! Now this quilt has been a long time in the making. A few years ago, probably in 2002, I bought a bag of scraps from Quilts Etc. in Salt Lake City. They were 4 inch squares, and there were, I think 200 of them. I promptly put them in my stash, because I didn't yet know what to do with them.
Probably two years later I was reading up on scrap quilts, and I came across a story about charm quilts in a quilting magazine. Charm quilts are this tradition of making a scrap quilt with often thousands of different fabrics, without them repeating. A similar article to the one I read can be found here. So I decided to make my own charm quilt, and started to stockpile fabric.
Fortunately, since I was working with small scraps, it was fairly easy to beg, borrow, and buy different fabrics. I spent a lot of time on eBay, and bought lots of scraps from sellers in Nebraska, Canada, Hawaii, all over. And I also got some scraps from other quilting friends.
The biggest problem was trying to figure out how to put the scraps together. I experimented with a few different patterns, and tried to plan out groups of colors. But I just wasn't coming up with anything I really liked. So I decided to go pretty simple, by just doing squares on point.
I also ran into some trouble when putting the squares together. I decided against grouping them by pattern or color, and figured that by sewing them together at random, some sort of pattern would naturally emerge. To give the eye a resting point I did the solid blue in the middle, and then center horizontal and vertical lines of primary blue, red, and yellow, to give it a bit of structure.
I think I collected enough fabrics by Christmas 2006, and began sewing it in spring 2007. Quilting has been done summer of 2008.
So, why am I calling it a puzzle quilt? Because the charm quilt story is just too long and convoluted to explain. It's easier to just say, there is only one square of fabric that repeats, and it's a puzzle to find it. :) Sometimes I also call it the ugliest quilt in the world, because there are some gawd-awful fabric combinations.
All told, there are 1008 2 1/2 inch squares, plus the mottled blue for the border and center. Right now I am the only one who knows which fabric is repeated, but I'm not telling. :) When you see the repeated piece, you'll know. The finished size is 81" by 109", a slightly odd size, but I still like it. :)
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The Full Quilt
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This is a close up of the blue center, and the primary red, blue, and yellow lines.
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This is a close-up of another section so you can see the quilting a bit better.
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Since I didn't plan the fabric placement, there are some seriously ugly combinations.
This would be one of them.
Again, since i didn't plan the fabric placement, somehow these two fabrics, same pattern different color, ended up right next to each other.
But there's some totally cute fabrics in here. Look! It's a monkey in a turban! And a monk, with wings!
The final step for this quilt was washing it. I use cotton batting, which shrinks a bit in the wash and gives the quilt a nice puckering look and texture, which you can kinda see in this picture. It's the center blue squares and I folded the side so you can see the backing fabric.
This is the one thing I was worried about when washing. I always wash my fabric when I first get them, this way, if they're going to shrink, they'll shrink before they're in a quilt, and if the colors are going to bleed, it wouldn't affect other fabrics later on. But because the squares came from lots of different people, I couldn't be sure the fabrics had been washed first. I wasn't so worried about shrinking, but I was worried that some of them would bleed. A couple did bleed to the back, which you can faintly see in this picture. But I think I'll be able to live with it. :)