Asymmetrical Half Square Triangle Quilt - A FINISH

I am so glad I decided to finish this quilt.  If you remember a while back, I shared a POST with you where I was quite discouraged about the quilting and how I just felt it did not have the look I was hoping for.  Well, you where all right, and I have to thank each and everyone of you encouraging me to finish this quilt.  Now that is blocked, bound and hung it looks good.  Not perfect, but a lot prettier and I love the finished result.

As I was finishing up this quilt I got more and more excited to getting it done.  All I needed was a break from it, having it lie in plain sight each day, looking at it, almost 'staring' back at me.  And the more I really looked at it, I started seeing the potential rather than the flaws.

The pictures does not show it that clearly, but I love the texture and how the light falls on the directional quilting , it adds a shine all over the surface of the quilt.  If you stood at different places, looking from other angles it looks different each time.

It is especially visible from the back of the quilt.

If you'd like to read up on the design process of this quilt you find it HERE.  I am at the moment working on a pattern for this quilt, playing with different colour layouts.  I treated myself with a very early Christmas present and bought the EQ7 program and are very eager to share it with all of you.  

It is pieced and quilted on my home sewing machine.  The finished size is 36½ inches x 45½ inches.  

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Asymmetrical HST Quilting Progress

Have you ever started a project and about halfway through you step back, look at what you've done, and thought to yourself, 'this is not what I thought it would look like?'

Well this is exactly how I am feeling right now looking at the progress I've made quilting this asymmetrical hst (half square triangle) quilt.  I was so eager and excited since this was my first design (you can read about it HERE), that I immediately started quilting.

I had a set image in my mind of what it might look like, and I loved the quilting design I had in mind and really thought it through before I started.  I honestly thought it would look great.  

But now that I'm stepping back and really looking at the quilt, I am second guessing myself.  I know, ... I know, we are own worst critics, but seriously, it is bugging me!

Sure it looks okay, but I think that what I have quilted so far, is 'ugly'.  The  pebbles aren't even, the straight lines aren't uniform and even the stitches itself is just not pretty.  I've checked and double checked the tension and its perfect, front and back...

  

I think I like the back more than the front :-)

It cant be that I'm rushing, I don't get that much time to quilt anyway, my little one is keeping me so busy wanting to be outdoors most the day, so I don't get that much time to quilt.  When I do, its short periods, so I don't think its concentration lapses?  Maybe its because I'm not quilting long periods, that my mind is not fully focused on what I am doing.

This quilt will be a wall hanging, so it would be in plain view, seeing all the little mistakes all the time.  Could or would you be happy to hang something for everyone to see if you are not entirely happy with what you've made...?

Maybe once I'm done, blocked, bound and hanging on the wall I might feel differently...

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Half Square Triangles, the possibilities are endless!

I dont know what it is about rainy weather, but for some reason on those days I get a lot more done.  I'd usually do the things that I put off or set aside for, you know 'a rainy day', LOL.  But this week I was inspired to create.  So as I was looking through my fabric stash and picked out a 6 piece fat quarter bundle my sister sent me from the UK and I started browsing the web for inspiration to strike.

Image from Robert Kaufman

I did a general search for modern quilts and the one that grabbed my attention was this Asymmetrical diamond quilt from Robert Kaufman. 

I downloaded the free pattern and as I was looking through the fabric placements and fabric requirements I was inspired to design something different using this layout as my base.

I wanted to extend the design a bit further so I took my graph paper and started drawing.  So after a lot of scribbling and playing around, this is what I came up with.

So putting the pattern aside I immediately started planning.  This whole quilt consists of half square triangles.  Now let me be honest, I am NOT a math wiz, all I wanted was to get the exact amount of hst (half square trianlges) I needed to make this quilt.  So using THIS video tutorial from MissouriQuiltCo on Youtube for creating pinwheels which are made up from hst I knew its an easy technique to get it done fast...

A fat quarter is 18 x 22 inches, that is if its cut perfectly.  I knew I could get 9 - 6 inch squares out of one fc (fat quarter), but since I still had to cut off the selvage AND straighten the edges, I ended up cutting 8, 5⅞ inch squares from 6 different prints giving me 48 squares and for my background colour I cut the same amount.  So.. from one square I get 4 hst, I had 48,.. so 48 x 4 = 192, and I needed 180, so I was in the clear.

So after a lot of cutting...

...piecing

and MORE cutting

I ended up with these... Beautiful open and pressed half square triangles.

but...they still needed squaring up!

So after a lot of trimming squaring the hst to 3⅝ inch squares it was time to arrange the pieces...

at this point I got really exciting seeing the picture grow...

I ran out of space on my table, but once I have these pieced together I can lay out the rest..

I cant wait to see the whole quilt pieced together, so you guessed it, I'm off to start piecing these squares together....

Happy quilting!

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