Quilt Sewalong Progress: Moda Blockheads 4!

Remember the sewalong I was doing last summer/fall? I'm finally sewing all the blocks into a big quilt! This post will show you my progress -- I'm still not done yet, but it's looking good! Read on!

The Moda Blockheads 4 sewalong gave us a new block each week to sew along to! I had a lot of fun with it and learned a lot about quilting techniques. Block by block, I posted my progress on Instagram and saw what everyone else was doing and felt a great sense of community. (In my day-to-day life, I'm the only one who sews, to my knowledge. So I have no one to geek out with or invite over for sewing time . . . ah, that would be so nice!)

Recently Instagram has taken away the feature that makes sewalongs possible. I can't even see other people's finished quilts, and it makes no sense to try to post my remaining blocks and quilt. For that and other reasons, I've quit the platform! Yay! I was never on there much anyway. There's really no reason to use it at all now. Anyway, I'm here blogging if you want to find me!

Back to the quilt! So, I still needed to finish a few blocks. I went ahead and skipped some that I just didn't want to do. Here are the remaining three I chose to do:

I don't think this is all that successful; it's supposed to be a blossom but I don't like my color choices.

I love this one! It's called Postage Stamp (or something) and I highlighted this frog and flowers to, I think, great effect. ^_^

This is a "blocky bud", and though I tried to learn from my mistakes on the blossom square, I still don't think it's that good.

But! After making those, I had a total of 37 blocks to use! I knew I was going to exclude one I *hated*, which had a motif of pencils (it was fun at the time but looks horrible to me), so that left 36: perfect for a square quilt top!

I had decided I wanted to try sashing between the blocks, since each of my blocks has crazy, busy colors that don't really relate. LOL! That's my preferred "look", I suppose! ;) I calculated what I needed and decided to go with white fabric with silver metallic accents. That or black/gray seemed the best neutral to contrast with all the color. Maybe I should have gone with black, who knows?

First I made my rows with vertical sashing strips in between.

Then I pieced them all together with the long, horizontal strips!

Then I realized that at 65"x65", the quilt was too small for my purposes (a queen bed throw/topper thing). So I found some old batik fat eighths (that I would probably continue to never use, let's be honest) and gave it a border! Now it is 82"x82" -- much better!

Here is C. relaxing on the finished top! I decided to put my batiks in rainbow order, mostly because everything else looked weird. Ha!

Now, let's talk about the back. I'm an oddball because I like to make quilts with backs that are as interesting as the front, but also still easy to make. This is mostly because I don't have yards and yards of wideback fabric -- or any given print -- laying around. And I didn't feel like spending money for this quilt. So we have this!

This is just the layout. Yep, I've used the darker colors of those batiks, plus a panel, and a half yard of Echino canvas, and then there's that Marimekko knockoff (??) knit at the top. I know it's pretty wacky, but I don't care. Because guess what? It's the back! ;)

And that's where I am now. I've started piecing the back pieces. I still need to create bias tape for the binding (out of a lively green floral print), and then lay it out and see if I have enough batting for this thing. If not, okay, I'll be buying some batting!

This quilt has slowly come to represent for me, a very very laid-back project process. I do what I can, when I can, and try not to get frustrated by how long it's taking. This is both easy and difficult, depending on the day! Sometimes I get that burst of energy that just wants the satisfaction of getting it DONE. Other times, I realize I'm pulled in so many directions and there's only so many hours in a day, and if I choose to do other stuff (or my kids choose for me), no big deal. It'll be done eventually. Maybe by the end  of the summer? I hope so!

Do you have any creative projects that you're slowly simmering on the back burner? Or obsessively working on to finish quickly because you're super excited about it? I'd love to hear about it! Leave a comment!