Karen's Kwilted Kubes

In May, many of my quilts were on display at the Deerfield Senior Center. My friend Karen saw my 3-D Color Study (from 2003) and asked me to make her a king-sized bedspread version. We worked together to come up with the design.

Of course, I was not able to use the same fabrics as I did 9 years ago, so I got some of them at  Quilter's Heaven in Northbrook and many others on-line from the Hingeley Road Quilt Shop in Minnesota.

First, since she wanted the cubes as the center medallion on a large expanse of black background, we increased the size of the original cubes by 1/3. As in the original 3-D quilt, each cube is made from triangles (and strips); 6 cubes, 6 rainbow colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet - sorry indigo), and 3 shades in each. So 18 total different fabrics. The center hexagon is made up of the 6 dark-shaded fabrics. Here is a snap of the finished section with those cubes.

 

I say "finished" because this quilt was actually created in 8 separate sections! There was no way that I was going to try to quilt a king-size project (the biggest in size that I have ever done) in one piece!  Nor was I going to send it out to get long-armed; the price would have been exorbitant. And, as my quilt friend Alice says: "Why would I pay someone to do my hobby!"  Indeed! So each section was pieced, sandwiched, and quilted individually. Then all were machine joined together. 

I have made bed-sized (twin and queen) projects before, and have, at times, done them in 2 or 3 sections. But nothing ever like this! To help, I took an on-line class from craftsy.com. This class, "Quilting Big Projects on a Small Machine", was taught very well by Ann Petersen. Based on what I learned, and the design of this particular quilt, it made sense to do it in 8 sections.

Back to the design: Karen had the brilliant idea to place the "border" so it would sit on the top edge of the spread! This really helped define and frame the top of the quilt.  The quasi-border is made from triangles of the same 18 fabrics, going through the ROY G B(I)V sequence all around. There is no top border, as that part is covered by the top sheet and pillows. The binding is made of 8" strips of the 6 dark fabrics, again repeating in the rainbow sequence.

The eight sections are: 1) center cube medallion, 2) top center (all black), 3) bottom center (black plus border), 4) left middle (black plus border), 5) left outer (all black), 6) right middle (black plus border),
7) right outer (all black), and 8) bottom (all black).  So there were still some big sections to quilt; but it was very manageable this way.  All of the quilting is free-motion stiple.

To see more pictures of the quilt process, click here and scroll down.

 

Above is the finished quilt flat on the floor (since the quilt is so large, it was difficult to get a good photo of it).
Below is the finished quilt on Karen's bed (the extraneous background objects were photoshopped out).

We were both really happy with the way it turned out.  Hope you like it too!