Start of One Block Wonder - November 2011

I had been admiring some of the One Block Wonder quilts I had seen at various shows. I bought this fabric at Fibers in Motion (now sadly closed) and started laying out the design for a queen-size quilt.

Alexander Henry 2009- "Otranto"

A few of the first hexagons

Completed center with partial border

Detail of seminole pieced border

Making the sandwich

miscalculated the corners - oh well

The next step was determining what to do for the quilting. For the center portion I decided on large spirals, in keeping with the natural motion created by the hexagons. After three bad starts and some practice improving my stitch ripping techniques, I just decided to go for it. 

I quickly discovered that this was a big quilt. Previously I had been using the "quilt-as-you go" method for queen-size quilts, quilting individual pieces and then joining them together. But I felt committed so I forged onward.  The resulting quilted spirals were not as smooth as I would have liked. It felt as though I was continually fighting the quilt with the large bulk of fabric I was trying to move around. It was really exhausting! Looking back, I think I would have quilted the center hexagon section, pieced and quilted the border separately and then joined all the panels using the quilt-as-you-go method. (It's all about process, right?)

The next question:  "what to do with the large black outer border?" After playing around with some quilting patterns on scraps I decided to do a Greek key type design to reflect the square theme of the seminole border. This required some chalk marking for guidelines. Hmmm. I remember I don't like following lines, but too late now. I am about halfway through the quilting of the outer black border.

So where do I go from here? Two months ago and nearly 10 months after the inital work on the quilt, I laid it out on our bed in hopes of rekindling my interest in completing it. My husband, Mark, walked into the room. I loved his comment: "So is this what you made in the last two days?" On the up side, he really liked the colors and the design so that may be just the spark I need to complete it....someday.