January quilt: zig-zag throw blanket

In February of last year, I posted this picture to my Facebook, proclaiming that it would soon be made into a throw for my couch.

"Soon" wasn't really the best descriptor. After I took that picture, I planned out the quilt and cut out all my squares. In the nearly a year that followed, I moved, got a new couch, sewed a few squares at a time, and made eleven other quilts. But one good thing that's coming out of my no-fabric-buying challenge is that I really get to buckle down and finish projects that I've already started. And luckily, I still have the couch that matches these colors - it's in my den, and I managed to move enough clutter out of the way to get a good picture of the quilt in its intended environment.

And here it is.

The finished product is about 60" X 60", and has blue, green, yellow, and brown zig zags made from 5" half-square triangles. The fabrics were a mish-mash of fabrics that caught my eye at Jo-Ann and Wal-Mart, along with Kona Bone. (The periodic symbol paintings were inspired by this blog post. "Kraus" would be my married name, if my own name weren't already so awesome.)

Forgive the treadmill arm poking into the picture. I used a dark-brown binding, and I quilted along the seam lines using light blue thread. I ended up with a lot more tucks and puckers than I'm comfortable with. I'm still learning the art of straight-line quilting. Plus, I was working with blocks that I made when I was a newbie, but I had to forge ahead even though I could see the rookie mistakes in them. I find that a while after I finish a project, I can usually forgive myself for the mistakes I've made on it. If I were selling it or giving away, I'd feel worse about it, but since I'm keeping this one, I don't need to beat myself up over the oopsies.

This is the pieced back.

If I had known how well this flowered fabric from Moda tied the whole thing together, I would have made the whole back from it. Overall, the quilt is nice. It's a good size, and super soft. Puts me right to sleep, though maybe it's just the winter cold talking.

That's three projects from stash.