Rainbow Forest, A Grandson Quilt Finally Finished

 

The Rainbow Forest Quilt is my September finish for the Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge. Although you have a choice of either working on an UFO or a new project and I have done both during the past two months, I still like to finish an UFO, especially one that has been a flimsy for over sixteen years as the Rainbow Forest Quilt was. (Sorry for the rather dark photo, but it was really hard taking a good pic and had to rely on photo editing).

I used to maintain an Excel spreadsheet of my quilt projects and stopped when I started blogging in 2016. According to my spreadsheet, the flimsy was finished in 2006 and measures 68” x 90”. At that time, both of my sons were in their twenties and wouldn’t have appreciated the wonderful Jennifer Sampou Rainforest prints but probably would have if the quilt was made ten years sooner. So, according to my recollection, I referred to this flimsy as the Grandson Quilt #1 which turns out to be wrong and was actually the Grandson Quilt #2. I can’t remember the source for the quilt pattern but the spreadsheet noted that this pattern as Contemporary Patchwork which today would be considered Modern with the six patch blocks using various shades of the same color group. Some of the prints in the blocks were from the Rain Forest collection but some were prints from other contemporary collections. I still love the bright colors with fun prints and was glad to be reacquainted with them when the flimsy was pulled out.

When I first pulled out the flimsy, I was excited to start quilting it but then had second thoughts since it measured 68” x 90” which is a little bit outside my comfort zone. I was so sure that the green yardage I found in the backing vault would be enough but was 12” too short so I had to piece the backing with some of the leftover blocks I was lucky to still have. Even more luckier was finding the blue fabric from the Rain Forest collection in the binding drawer. I decided to machine quilt wavey grid lines on the center blocks and straight lines on the border with a variegated thread on top and green thread on the bottom. My sweet Juki Junebug was acting up on the final few lines of quilting and I was lucky to be able to finish it. I was debating on whether to sew down the binding by machine but decided I better hand sew it since there was a good chance Juki Junebug was too tired to finish. I know I should take her in for a Spa Treatment but am not happy with the local service center. I am entertaining thoughts of buying a new machine but really love my Juki Junebug.

I thought I include another close-up photo of the wonderful focus print and the border fabric. I know it wasn’t too hard to find fabrics in my stash then which went well with these prints.

As mentioned earlier, I thought the Rainbow Forest Quilt was the Grandson Quilt #1 but it turned out the blue quilt on the right was the Grandson Quilt #1. This quilt was made with then contemporary blue prints like batiks and from the Animal Attraction fabric line and was finished in 2002. Thank goodness I still have a printout of my spreadsheet to set me straight. This quilt also uses a border print and the pattern is a four-patch log cabin which was a class I taught during my quilt shop days. I can say that I still like my bright fabrics, fun prints and simple patterns; making quilts with borders, not so much.

Here’s a side by side photo of the two Grandson Quilts which is nice to have finally finished after starting them when I had vision of grandchildren back in the 2000’s. In July, I finished the Granddaughter #2 Quilt and the Granddaughter #1 Quilt is down for this year’s UFO Challenge and it’s another big one made with another Jennifer Sampou fabric line. The Master Quilt Holder had a real workout today with the pic taking  of the Grandson quilts and as mentioned in my earlier post, I need to stop making long quilts because they’re getting harder to photograph. I’m calling my participation in the September UFO Challenge as done even though there’s 20 days left in the month and there are three other projects I can do. Since July when the new Challenge started with the new rules, along with some dreaming, I have eight flimsies. I’m hoping to quilt at least one of them this month although September is going to be busy with the darling Granddaughter babysitting us for an entire week at the end of the month as well as October since I am determined to finally clean out the bedroom closets. You have to believe me that it is going to be one huge undertaking. Wish me fun.