Succulent Variation

Friends of ours were travelling in northern Michigan last fall when they happened to stop in at a local quilt shop (though they are not quilters).  Inside they were drawn to a large quilt hanging on the wall. It was made with Kaffe Fassett fabrics, and they loved it! His fabrics are generally bold and bright, and feature a lot of floral motifs. So they snapped a pic, and when they returned home, asked me if I could do one like this I previously made a bedspread-sized quilt for them back in 2011 (Wondrous Waves). 

They told me the name of this pattern was "Succulent", hence the name of this quilt.  However, the published pattern includes all of the required fabrics using a blue colorway (23 different fabrics in all!).  The one in the store was made with more reds and yellows. My friends wanted something more like that. 

Since we had to find new fabs anyway, and because she wanted the quilt to be slightly bigger (at 92 x 84) than the one in the pattern, we decided to make some design modifications. It is still made up of smaller (4") squares and larger (8") squares. But, in order to get the size she wanted, the borders needed to be 6". So the new design featured 16 smaller squares (per row) and two larger squares (per row spanning two rows each). In total, there are 18 rows. Because of the large size, I knew that I would make this in four sections using my Quilt in Sections technique. 

Then we had to find the right fabrics. She looked on-line and we went back and forth, and eventually agreed on 11 fabrics for the small squares and 5 for the large squares (one of which was also used in the borders, the binding, and the back of the quilt).  Most are red, some are dark blue or dark green, and one is bright green. She wanted this last one for some "pop" in the design. We ordered some from that same quilt store, but had to get the rest from several other sources.

Next came the challenge of actually laying out what went where.

Can't have a large "border" fabric sqaure right next to the border!

Can't have the same smaller square fabric adjacent (or even touching diagonally) to itself in two rows.

Can't have too many green pops!

The large squares had to be randomly placed.

There must be two large squares for each full row pair

Keeping in mind that I would do it in quarters, each "quarter" row pair actually called for 16 small fabrics and one large one. Sharp eyed readers will immediately notice that 11 (different fabs) is not a multiple of 16! So each quarter row pair had to have all 11 fabs plus 5 repeats! Not adjacent, not diagonal. In the next row pair down, I then tried to use a different "plus 5" than in the row above (or to the right) while still being frugal with the green pops.

Here are each of the 4 sections after piecing (including borders!) and quilting:

Upper Left

Lower Left

Lower Right

Upper Right

For the quilting, I used a variegated thread with reds and oranges. Even by the blue and green squares, the quilting line is pretty hidden. I quilted in the ditch both horizontally and vertically for every row and column. However, I did not quilt into the 8" squares.    

When all the quilting was done, I joined the two upper quarters together, then the two lower quarters, and finally the two halves together. A regular flip binding and it was all finished!