SAQA Auction Quilt

Nothing like cutting it close, but I did finish my auction quilt.  The "received by" date is June 1. Actually I made two because I screwed up the first one.  I was using left-overs from my big green quilt project and some new piecing.  I was quite pleased with the way it looked, but the trouble began with the quilting. My plan was to free-motion quilt up and down each one of those skinny wigglies.  I had done this very successfully when I had SW sections as part of another quilt, but I had never made a quilt using only SW's. With so many seams I had a lot of distortion, but even worse, one very narrow strip just buckled up and was unquiltable.  Actually it was a blessing in disguise.  Better to find out on a twelve inch square piece and not a 64" x 48" piece.

Fortunately I had enough leftover strips with some additional piecing to make a second one.  This time I decided to quilt it with a walking foot and make curvy, swooping lines diagonally across the quilt.  Success!  No distortion, no buckling and a nice flat piece.

Here's the finished product, SW #4, Greening Up.  I decided to call this series SW (for Skinny Wiggly) and give each one a number and name.  I had made two previous quilts using SW's, so they are #1 and #2.  The quilt will be faced, the photo is just cropped here. Can you see my swoopy quilting? I used a variegated thread, something I often do.

Here is a detail of the quilting.

I like my backs to coordinate with the front and I often use my hand dyed fabric, as I did here.

And here is the disaster.  Can you see you see how it distorted?  I decided to capitalize on that scrunched up strip and I stuffed it with fiber fill.  I'm calling this one SW #3, Snake in the Grass.  
That's the snake on the lower left. I don't know if I'll ever use it for anything.  Chalk it up to a learning experience.

By the way, my big quilt looks nothing like these two.  I'm calling that one SW #5, Big Green and it's all basted and ready to go.  Quilting starts today!

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Fridays.  Go see what everyone is up to and leave some comments, if you do.  We all love to hear what you think.