Continuing to update my blog with the quilts finished over the last few years, comes the one that drew me to quilting in the first place.
This quilt was the background theme of my quilting life for over ten years, before I finished it last year. So after yet another year, here finally are the pictures of my completed quilt. Also enjoy some trivia about the original quilt, made by the Pennsylvania resident, Salinda Rupp in the 1860s, which came to be known as the Nearly Insane Quilt and which launched a thousand quilts!
Do you know that this quilt (not mine, but the original Salinda Rupp quilt) actually has at least two poems inspired by it? One of them you can check out here. Despite all my research on the net, I could not discover who wrote the other, titled ‘The Geometry of Grace’, so am not sure if it would be fair to share it here.
As for my quilt, which I call ‘Totally Mads’ , the colours were inspired by Jaipur blue pottery.
It has over 5600 pieces, including the borders and sashing!
Most people prefer to English paper piece it or piece it by hand, because the pieces are so tiny. I decided to draft patterns to foundation paper piece it by machine.
When actually quilting it, I used the quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) method, best suited to my sit-down Husqavarna Viking Topaz 30. Because the squares are on-point, I had to be innovative about the panels. I decided on a total of nine panels, but had to add four for the borders because of the way blocks joined up…
The original quilt finishes at 88” x 88” but I added and extra border to increase the size.
I have used a double batting, one a bamboo and the other cotton. The quilt weighs a ton now! Lesson learnt— never again, especially for a quilt where the top is already so heavy because of the enormous number of pieces. (This also explains why I have no full frontal picture of the quilt!)
The other thing that irks me ( but I refuse to do anything about it) is that the borders are not as heavily quilted as the rest of the top, so they kind of ‘hang loose’.
This video might give you a better look at the quilt.
Hope you enjoyed that!
P.S I have realised that my block-wise record of the quilt was also not completed, so I shall do that in subsequent posts, for those of you who want to jump into this extremely soul-satisfying (and yet at times exasperating) project.
Like I mentioned, the patterns are available on my store!
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Thank you for this finale. Your perseverence inspires me to take up huge projects. Usually now a days I stick to smaller projects so that I don’t abandon them midway
Thank you! The kind of satisfaction you get from these never-ending projects is quite something else! 😊