bloggers’ quilt festival: roy g. zig quilt

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blogger's quilt festival, roy g. zig

When I read on Facebook that Peg at Sew Fresh Fabrics is sponsoring the prize for the Favorite ROYGBIV Quilt category of Blogger’s Quilt Festival at Amy’s Creative Side, I knew it was time to submit my very first entry.

I made this quilt using Rachel at Stitched in Color’s Ziggy Strings tutorial, which she wrote for this past spring’s Scrap Attack Festival of Strings event. I sorted my mountain of string scraps into color order and sketched this quilt out.

Most of you already know this quilt won the big prize at the Festival of Strings: a roll of Warm and Natural batting. (Quilts for a year, ya’ll.)

But what I don’t talk about so much is that I started this quilt the morning after the Boston Marathon bombing in April.

Lost for a way to react to the scary things going on in my city, I turned to quilting.

and making something beautiful did make me feel a whole lot better. The rainbow is appropriate for Boston, too; Massachusetts was the first state to allow any of its residents to marry, regardless of sexual orientation, and I *did* finish the quilt during Pride Week. (Also a little-known fact: my husband and I chose to be legally married at Boston City Hall before our TN wedding so that we could have an MA marriage certificate.)

This quilt is my proudest and my best quilt of 2013 (heh so far!) and I’m so glad for the Blogger’s Quilt Festival and the chance it provides for us to look back over our year of work and think about which are our “best” quilts. Hop on over to the ROYGBIV category and check out all the fabulous quilts shown there!

finished: roy g. zig quilt

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finished quilts, roy g. zig, scrap attack string fever

A few photos to prove that I’ve finished this beast, yes?

 

At 64” x 84”, if this isn’t the biggest quilt I’ve ever shoved through the Janome, it’s definitely close.

 

You can see the straight-line quilting a bit better here. I chose to follow the pattern of some of the zigs, rather than just go up and down the quilt. It turned out okay, but there was some teeth-gnashing as I turned those corners, and got folds of fabric caught under the walking foot filling in middle spaces.

 

And good news for my husband, who has to move all these quilts this winter (we ARE moving out of this tiny apartment, no matter what!): I am giving this one away.

 

Yep. My professor friends who live in Phoenix have only a very small throw-size quilt that I made in my early quilting days (completely hand-pieced and hand-quilted, hand-sewn binding and all). He is very tall, and I felt so sorry when they sent me a photo of him trying to nap under the little quilt. He definitely needed a bigger one. And they needed one that both of them could snuggle under! Their anniversary was ten days ago, and her birthday is two days from now, so a perfect excuse.

 

I backed the quilt in scraps. The spirit of a scrap quilt is “buy nothing new,” yes? I tried to carry the rainbow idea onto the back. The other side is sky, sun, grass, earth.

 

The quilt is bound in the white Memoir print from Violet Craft’s Madrona Road, which I have now stashed and re-stashed. Now I need to re-re-stash it. Ha!

(P.S. If this is the first time you’re reading about this quilt, please know that I used Rachel @ Stitched in Color’s Ziggy Strings tutorial to construct the blocks, and just laid out the blocks differently. Easy peasy!)

Thanks again for putting up with so many photos of this one. I’m proud of it–but I’m MORE than ready to bundle it into the mail and move on to the next thing! Onward!

roy g. zig string top/festival of strings

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roy g. zig, scrap attack string fever

Oh, Rachel @ Stitched in Color imagined that our Festival of Strings might be ladies in sunhats in a backyard, slinging our quilts over a clothesline and swilling lemonade. So lovely! So southern!

Never having been one to play along, I chose to sling my quilt overa huge metal rhino, natch.

I usually don’t make much of finished quilt tops, but Rachel’s deadline is midnight on 5/30 and I’d be cutting it close to have this quilted by then. And no rhino pictures.

I did make a back

 

and this is ready to baste

 

and the Seacoast Modern Quilt Guild meets this Saturday, so I really want to have it quilted and bound to show off. Can I make it?

 

Really, I used all string scraps, from various Trader Joe’s bags in my closet. The white is Kona Bone. I used Rachel’s Ziggy Strings tutorial (so fun! DO IT). My husband helped me pick off the foundation paper backing.

And the rhino lives at New England Biolabs in Ipswich MA, where Nate works. He does not have a name. Roy?

 

still zigging

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audiobooks, roy g. zig, string fever, washi dress

I’m back from Phoenix and East TN…

and I spent Thursday and Friday working like mad to finish the last 22 blocks I needed for my “Roy G Zig” quilt. The top has to be done by Friday to enter in Rachel’s String-A-Long contest/giveaway! I was worried but now I think I might make it. (Though really, I think my Sunday Morning quilt also qualifies.)

A revelatory sidenote: though these blocks are super-fun and -relaxing to make, there are a lot of them to crank through (I made 56 for a throw size). When I held my 100th post giveaway a few weeks ago, I asked people to recommend a book. Several folks recommended listening to audiobooks while quilting. Beth @ Plum and June recommended, in particular, Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic, which, frankly, did not sound like my kind of book at all, but I gave it a try and it. was. so. awesome. It’s about the assassination of James Garfield, but is so fascinating. I probably made 20 blocks before it ended!

Then, on my own, I found Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, available as an audiobook from my library through Overdrive, which I’d meant to read after enjoying Gone Girl last summer. I’m 3/4 of the way through and told my husband last night that I wished I had more laundry to fold so that I could finish listening to it instead of watching TV. Yep.

I love quilting, but have been a little sad that it’s cut into my reading time. Audiobooks, though–you can cut, sew, iron, whatever. Awesome. Do you listen to audiobooks while you sew? Do you have any specific recommendations? (I’d be especially interested in hearing about books you think are good AUDIObooks–some are much better than others.)

/pointless interlude. Here are my Zig blocks laid out:

I’m supposed to give this away, BUT. We’ll see!

Also on the strong-a-long front: Marla @ Sew Hungry wrote an awesome String-A-Hex block tutorial that I’m hoping will help me eliminate this pile:

 

This is way more string scraps than I thought I’d be left with after finishing 56 Ziggy Strings blocks! They’re mostly uglies, so I am super-ready to part ways with them. String-A-Hex next?

Well, after I do some more Washis.

 

Top print is a Kokka strawberry print from Trefle, which I bought from Pink Castle’s Skinny Sale (holy moly, an insane deal I got on this stuff, and it already came!). It’s going to be a Washi for my mom if I have any self-control at all. Bottom print is from Sew Fresh Fabrics, and it’s a Lizzy House Constellations print. For another me-Washi. 🙂

Enjoy your long weekend! I hope you are doing better than picking paper off zig blocks while it is 45 degrees and raining cats and dogs. Not that I know anything about that.

roy g. zig

Tags

roy g. zig, scrap attack string fever, string fever, string quilt

Minutes after I hit “publish” on my last post (“happy Marathon Monday”), my brother texted me from Tennessee: “please tell me you didn’t go to watch the marathon today. don’t freak out, but…”

While I have very little right to freak out about what we are apparently calling the “Boston bombing” (!!!! my city! in the name of an “x horrible situation”), I am shaken. We live 15 miles north of the Tobin Bridge, and Nate works in Ipswich, not in the city, so we are far out of any potential danger. But there’s something about seeing reporters broadcasting from streets I USED to walk every day when in I worked in publishing (on Berkeley St.), seeing destruction on the sidewalks in front of my former dentist’s office, the bar where I used to go with my fellow EA’s for cheap waffle fries, hear about the Atlantic Fish Co where I’ve eaten oysters and swilled sauv blanc…

and that’s not even the library, where I’ve also spent a good deal of time. If you’re not safe in front of the Boston Public Library, where ARE you safe?

I’ve never not felt safe in Boston. And really, I still feel like this is a very safe place to be. I’ve told lots of people that I feel like this city is filled with good people, people who won’t watch you struggle and fail to react. People who WILL help you lift your stroller onto the T. Or who will help you decide whether to get off at Park or Copley, even if you’re calling it “Cope-ly.”

Turns out when I’m mad and sad, starting a new project is pretty much the ticket to helping me feel just a little better. And a rainbow project! Well. Color always makes ME feel a little better about my world.

18 blocks done, out of 56. Using Rachel’s tutorial (so.fun.and.addicting.) How could I resist? Calling it Roy G. Zig. (“Big Zig” might also have worked?)