Shape Shifter

Sharon Blackmore of Loveshack Quilts posted that she was doing a 1 day mystery quilt in October, which happened to be while my guild was on retreat.  5 of us decided to make the quilt, and we had a lot of fun. 

I tried to pull from my stash, but the fabric directions were to have lights and darks, and my lights kept becoming mediums.  So, I went shopping and found these two fabrics at Addie's.  Grunge Ruby Red and Kona Espresso (a dark dark brown).   By this time I had the initial cutting directions, so I thought I might have those large solid rectangles to have fun with the quilting. 

We are are in progress, lined up in the hotel hallway.   It was ridiculous how much it felt like a race, to get each step done before the next step was released.

And here are our 5 tops completed.   I added a small border to mine after, to fully enclose all the espresso fabric.

And then the real fun began.  I channeled my inner Jodi Robinson, and used designs from her Modern Simplicity book.  It has been my number one modern quilting resource for a long long time, and then about 18 months ago I got to take classes with her!   Great fun.

 Each size of rectangle got it's own design.  The are all freehand, organic designs, but a few of them needed a few registration lines to help with the spacing.

 Once I had decided to buy fabric, I had toyed with the idea of making it a true mystery, and asking a friend to buy fabric for me....to which my DH said "I'll text her and tell her to buy ugly fabric".  I said "you watch out, that will be your quilt"

 And so it is....not the ugly fabric part, but it is his quilt (and I did the fabric shopping) It is our 25th anniversary, and this is my gift to him.  His current couch quilt is I think the 3rd quilt I ever made.  I love the fabrics and pattern still, but it's well worn, very thin, and the quilting is lacking from a different place in my quilting journey--a simple outline of the patches, with dark thread on a very light backing, all sorts of starts and stops and thread snarls. 

Then I added ribbon candy in the red, I tried using the brown thread but wasn't happy, so I changed threads.

 And some hoop-y shapes in the outer borders. 

 a lovely minkee backing shows the quilting beautifully, and will be nice and warm and cozy for my husband to use in front of the TV.