Grape Juice: A finished quilt with a bit of a spilled history

    Name: Grape Juice

Design:  Quarter Log Cabin by Liz Katsuro

Size:  64" by 80"

Fabric: Purple, bright pink and low volume scraps 

Quilted: by me with Aurifil 50 wt in Dove grey, straight lines

Binding:   Kona Eggplant

Backing:  an awesome vintage sheet in purple

I actually thought I was finished this quilt last weekend.  I sat down at the computer.  I fired up my blog.  I loaded the pictures and... I realized that the quilt had a boo boo.  Oh my word.  Obviously some of the blocks in the last row had become turned around in the quilt assembly and I did not notice until I was ready to write up a celebratory blog post.  For crying in the soup.  This quilt was finished, people.  Seriously.  Quilted every 1/2"  in long rows.  Bound solidly.  Even lint brushed.  And it had a boo boo.  So.  This quilt is now recovering from major surgery of the quilt kind.  I undid the binding.  I unpicked the row of zigzag stitching that I do before I bind the quilt.  I unpicked the bazillion rows of quilting up the length of the quilt so that I could free  the bottom row.  I unpicked the bottom row, and separated the blocks.  Reassembled them CORRECTLY this time and then began the whole process in reverse.  Good grief.  Note to self.  Please check the layout VERY VERY carefully before putting the whole shebang together.  The really crazy thing is that as soon as I look at the pictures of it sitting on the floor all basted and ready to go, I see the mistake.  This quilt stayed on the floor basted for almost 2 weeks and I did not notice and Husband did not notice.  Blah!  Never have I picked out so many tiny threads.  So that is the story of the Grape Juice quilt that spilled.

So... I found the tutorial for this quilt when I was looking for a way to use up a bunch of scraps.  It is a great tutorial and uses 2.5" strips.  You can burn through a lot of scraps and it just works.  I decided to stick to a fairly unified colour group despite the scrappiness.  I started this on my featherweight and finished it on my Janome.  I originally was going to make a smaller quilt but it grew.  Now that it is done and I mean, really done, I think I really like it.  Last weekend I was just plain sick of it.  I am so over that now.  Okay.  So.  I quilted it densely in long straight lines in lovely Aurifil 50 wt in grey. The one called Dove.  The binding is Kona Eggplant.  The whites are a complete mixture of low volume leftovers and that is okay.

And the name?  We have had a bumper crop of purple grapes and we made grape juice last weekend.  This quilt is the colour of the grape juice without a doubt.  What do you think about the vintage sheet backing?  It was a really heavy 100% cotton sheet.  It is very happy!  And our grass is starting to recover from the record breaking heat and the water restrictions but it still looks pretty bad in spots.

Lots of grapes still and surprisingly the bears have not been into them yet.  I say yet, because we did have a bear in the yard yesterday.  She was quite lovely and I have named her Mabel.  I do hope she keeps her distance.  She is welcome to the field, the woods and the pond but lets just keep it at that.  Linking up with Leanne for Scraptastic Tuesday!