Use It Up!

Finally, the Use It Up quilt from Accent on Angles (affiliate link) is a grand finish!

Not only do I love the color combo and the quilting thread choice, but the size - a really nice 48" x 65" lap size.

What started out as this fabric selection,

worked it's way to strip sets with angled sashing pieces,

then blocks, some of which were made in 95 degree heat requiring the assistance of a wooden iron,

and the painfully tedious making of 164 HST's.

The quilt picture in the book certainly doesn't look like it requires 164 HST's, 

and I probably would have thought twice about making this pattern had I read through it first. That could be my fault, but let's call this frustration 1.

Frustration 2 - this pattern needed serious editing. The beginning of the book, which goes over very thoroughly how to make the strip set/angled sashing blocks, is wonderful. 

This pattern however, had me cut too many strips for the strip sets, resulting in a lot of leftovers. Grrr. How did I discover this? Well, like Flower Joy, I thought I'd make up extra blocks for the back. 

Which turned out to be 30 blocks, enough for another top. Use It Up only used 22. Grrr. Maybe cutting that many strips would allow for lots of variety? Anyway, just too many.

Frustration 3 - I followed the cutting instructions for the border pieces that are in addition to the HST's. And then I looked at the quilt diagram, which was labelled as to where those additional border pieces go. Turns out, the two did not match up, requiring the piecing together of a leftovers to get the right size border pieces. Grrr.

Once I finally got through all of that, a backing was pieced together with leftovers but no blocks, 

and I was thrilled to finally get it on the frame.

Now for thread colors. I could have gone gold, but it just disappeared. Then I found a gold with a green cast called Cleopatra.

Not bad, though I kept searching, and found Split Pea, a correctly named color, and not one I would choose for just any quilt.

But Split Pea turned out to be the winner, really adding a beautiful sparkle to the Bluster pantograph on Use It Up.

With the extra 30 blocks, I plan to make one more quilt from the Accent on Angles book (affiliate link), though there are a couple other projects that need attention first. So, be patient, another quilt is coming soon!

Have a great weekend quilting!