Circular Spectrum #72

Way back in February.....back before Everything Changed, I started to make a lap quilt for our den. We wanted something that had a neutral background (to match our couch), but also one which had pops of color to provide some interest.  

Looking through the interweb, we found this posting.  As described, that quilt had circles of color fused to background squares and then the quilting went over them to secure them in place. This was appealing as I don't do applique.

However, there were two things that didn't work for us. We liked the idea of the pattern but also wanted something with more actual dimension. So just fusing on the circle fabs was an issue. Also, this was a   mini-quilt (18" x 18"!), where the squares were only 2" finished! Which means the circles were even tinier. To make a lap quilt with these block dimensions would require 672 squares!!!  Plus such eensy dimensional circles would be problematic.

So, we decided to make the background squares 6" finished, and the circles 4".

How to add some dimension?

I started by cutting a 4.5" circle of the colored fabric, AND a 4.5" circle of lightweight non-fusible interfacing. I sewed the interfacing to the right side of the fabric with a 1/4" seam. Part of the interfacing was then carefully cut away:

I then turned the assembly inside out, which resulted in a 4" circle with a nice finished edge. The raw edges were turned under and held in place by the interfacing; since it is so thin, pressing the circle made it disappear!

Next, I cut a template out of card stock; 6" x 6" with a 4" circle in the center. This was laid on a square of the background fabric:

Fabric square

Fabric square with template

I then cut out a 3.5" diameter circle of batting. This was placed inside the circle of the template:

Then, the inverted fabric circle sandwich was placed over the batting:

The three layers (fab, batt, fab) were pinned in place and the template was removed (different fab shown in the picture below): 

I then stitched very close to the edge with a thread color that matched the color of the circle fabric. So in the finished square it is pretty much invisible from more than a foot away (a faux applique?):

The combination of the layer of batting and the stitch-around-the-edge provided both the visual and actual dimensionality that we were looking for

So now that I had the process, we had to lay out the colors. We went from top left to bottom right in the full range of the spectrum. Some of the circle colors are used twice; some just once. There are two colors in the background squares, so those were just alternated

Cut, sew, invert, trim, template, batt, circle, sew. Sew the blocks into rows, sew the rows together.

The quilting is in the ditch of the background squares, both vertically and horizontally, using a thread color to match the darker squares. Again.....mostly invisible.

Just like with my quilt "All Different, Yet All The Same", I felt that a border, or even a binding, would detract from the effect. So I once again went with the "facing binding" technique. See "All Different" for an explanation.

OK....enough suspense. The final product:

Time to cuddle up and relax!!!!!