Polly
78” x 89”
Polly lived most of her life following the rules. Getting married when she was supposed to. Having kids when she was supposed to. Baking all the things, keeping a clean house, volunteering at church. Her life was as it should be. It was also painfully boring and Polly had no idea who SHE was in the midst of everyone else’s expectations. Finally, with the kids gone and her husband on the golf course Polly had a chance to explore herself. That meant figuring out what she actually liked in bed to what food she wanted to eat for herself. She took herself out almost daily and explored the world around her one little trip at a time. It’s not that she hated her life, but she didn’t know if she actually liked it. Little by little she explored, experimented, and learned to enjoy what she, herself, could give and get out of the world. She finally knew who she was, who she wants to be.
This quilt is a culmination of the Quilters’ Playcation Adventure Sewalong 2022. Each week for the year I shared how to make a unique improv quilt block. One version shared was a three colour solid and this version was love affair with prints. When I started the year and I stressed leaving open the finished block size so layout possibilities were endless. By the end of the year I knew this version would have blocks all the same size. After measuring my blocks I picked a 10.5” square as my default size and got down to the business of cleaning everything up. 52 blocks, however, does not make for even sides on a quilt, so I used scraps to make a handful more blocks to get to 56 blocks. This gave me a 7 x 8 block layout. Sashing in this collection of red-orange prints framed out each block. I’m not generally a sashing girl, but I think it absolutely works here!
She’s a big quilt so I knew that quilting her would not be easy. I had a friend baste her on the long-arm to save me some time. Turns out that this layout and the use of sashing actually simplified the quilting a lot. I used the curvy stitch that comes on the Bernini in the sashing. That was easy. Then I just quilted each block on its own. Free motion quilting is very manageable when you only work one block at a time. Each block got quilted uniquely. Sometimes it was an all over design, sometimes that outlined or directly highlighted the piecing. The decision was most dictated by my mood when I got to that block. I switched out threads between peach, pale grey, light blue, and an olive green. I filled a bobbin and when that or the spool ran out I switched to another colour. All the threads blended very well on the wide back Kaffe Fassett I used on the back.
The original plan was for a dark binding, with a bit of green piping. I did not have in my stash nor could I find anything in the store that was a good blue that worked for this. Grey washed things out too much. Also, I had deadlines for a local show. So I used more of one of the sashing prints and extended that orange line. The green did make an appearance in my stitching though. I chose to use a Perle thread (from Valdani) to stitch down the binding in a visible manner. I love this way of finishing a quilt. It’s fast and has a great effect.
Polly is ready to explore the world now.
View all the free tutorials here.
Check out the layout discussion for all the quilt blocks.
Sew along with the 2023 Quilters’ Playcation Adventure Sewalong.