I finished the most recent quilt top.



The pattern is called "Sparkling Gemstones." It's kind of a modification of the four-patch - the "patches" are rectangular and there are sashing strips sewn right onto the patches - so when you sew them together, the quilt gets sashed.

This came out larger than I anticipated. Oh, I saw the dimensions printed (it is something like 58" by 72" - very nearly twin bed sized) but I envisioned it smaller somehow.

The photo above is not very true to color; I've concluded that very early in the morning, within an hour or two of sunrise, is probably the only good time for photographing quilts in my backyard.

A better photo of the colors is here:



The fabric is (if I remember correctly) Swanky by Chez Moi from Moda. It was a "jelly roll" - a big bundle of strips. (There are supposed to be 40, 2 1/2" strips. My particular jelly roll was inexplicably one strip short, but I substituted a very similar fabric - actually from another line by Chez Moi - for the missing strip.)

The borders are a piece of fabric I bought separately but it is from the same line. I think it was a good choice.

I like the "crispness" of the quilt. I don't often use pure white sashing (preferring to either use a color or something like unbleached muslin for the vintage feel) but I think the white is just right with these fabrics.

I wound up sort-of laying out the quilt - I started laying it out on my bed, got the first eight rows together, sewed them up (because I ran out of room) and then did the last four. I wasn't quite as persnickety as I am with my usual lay out of quilts, because the colors are all close enough and the style is so similar that I only really worried about not getting big "blobs" of blue somewhere, or putting a string of patches with the same fabrics too close together.

Here's the typical corner-close-up, to give more of an idea of the fabrics:



I'm pretty happy with it (I say that about most of my quilts, don't I?) especially given that it's almost big enough to serve as a coverlet on my bed.