Making It Fun & Happy with Michael Miller Fabrics

The February theme for our Michael Miller Brand Ambassador Project was "Designer's Choice: Make whatever makes you happy!" 

Fabrics featured in this post were provided by Michael Miller Fabrics as part of my being a Michael Miller Brand Ambassador

We were invited to pick fabrics from Michael Miller's Basics Collections, and I couldn't resist choosing a fun mix of black & white prints (including some Garden Pindots) and a rainbow of Cotton Couture Solids: Watermelon, Apricot, Marigold, Apple, Azure, and Blackberry.

I have been having lots of fun teaching improvisationally pieced spirangle designs in my Free Styling & Spiraling workshops, and wanted to create a new layout featuring triangle spirangles.   

These triangle spirangles are sure to mesmerize and energzie.  Plus they are so much fun to make and result in very little wasted fabric!!

It was fun to supersize my spirangle triangles! Once all my blocks were assembled, it was time to figure out the background and construction--which had me stumped for a bit.

When a friend came over for lunch, she was curious to see what I was working on in the studio.  I showed her my blocks and remaining black and white prints for use with the background. I shared that I was stumped on the background and she suggested adding a skinny border of black and white stripes to help frame the spirangles.

I just happened to have some Small Black & White Stripes in my stash, but adding them to my design added another level of complexity to the construction. If I added the stripes to the spirangle blocks, some of the stripes would get cut off at the inside angles. But if I added the striped strips to the background triangles, they would get cut off at the tips of the starry design.

First I drafted a paper mock up to better visualize the construction process involving stripes. I consulted a few design books to no avail. I even called in reinforcement, aka Doug, to see if he had any suggestions. Ultimately I decided to sleep on it. The next morning I returned to the studio and realized that Y-seams were the solution. With a little planning and marking, they were surprisingly easy to achieve and yielded a perfect 1/2" striped border around the entire perimeter of my spirangle star design.

At this stage, I started thinking ahead to the quilting. I was hoping to quilt this on the longarm, but feared my skills weren't up to par to do justice. Plus having all that negative space on solid black can be a bit daunting, especially when your skills aren't quite there yet. I was also shifting my focus to working on my Birds in the Air Project Quilting challenge entry which just happened to involve rainbows, triangles, and a hexagon finish! I loved the elongated triangles that made up the borders in my PQ entry and thought about applying the same edge treatment to my spirangle star. I first auditioned this idea by uploading the above image into Microsoft Paint and drawing the white lines to represent what would be the new perimeter of my quilt. Refining the outside borders gave more focus to the spirangle star, and greatly reduced the size of my quilt (thereby the quilting that would be involved!!)

The unused black and white prints, along with remaining solids were pieced together for the quilt back. I couldn't resist snapping a photo of Panda trying to blend in while I was pressing the last few seams of the quilt backing!

I was so excited to jump into the quilting that I failed to conduct sufficient auditions.  I started to quilt one of the spirangles and absolutely hated the quilting--the motifs, the threads used, and my glitchy stitching that often ran past the seams. After sleeping on it and still hating the quilting, I decided it needed to go and began to rip out the stitching. It took me over 2 hours to unload the quilt and rip out all the quilting from just one partially stitched triangle spirangle! This gave me a lot of time to mull over my options for moving forward:
1. Audition new designs/threads and try again on the longarm
2. Switch back to the comfort of quilting it on my Juki sewing machine
3. Consider an all over design that was within my skill level on the long arm

I wanted to make this work on the longarm. So I spent some more time auditioning filler designs and threads. Spikey suns is a fun combination of spirals and zig zags, which seemed appropriate for the triangle spirangle blocks. Doodling the motif onto the acrylic plastic template placed over my quilt top helped me to better visualize the scale and flow of the design. I spent more time choosing a light grey thread that played nicely with the dotted black and white background, as well as all 6 solid-colored spirangles. Last but not least was doing some practice stitching in the background areas that would be trimmed away later. After a few practice motifs, I was ready to cross over into the actual quilt top.

Finally, I was in my happy place stitching spikey suns edge to edge across my quilt top. The next thing I knew, I was taking my last pass and the quilt was complete!!  This morning I trimmed away the excess background and bound in black and white stripes making for a last minute February finish (thank goodness for Leap Year!!!)

When it came to naming my quilt, the rainbow of triangles in the center reminded me of the pie wedges in the Trivial Pursuit game. The game then reminded me of the book and movie, Pursuit of Happyness--which connects back to "Make Something that Makes You Happy" theme.

Pursuit of Quilting Bliss, Finishes 29" per side, 57" x 49"

I'd love for you to see how fun it is to improvisationally piece spirangle designs!! Join me in one of my upcoming Free Styling & Spiraling Workshops:

• 8/28: The QUILT Guild of Northwest Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
• 9/23: Quilt and Fiber Art Festival, Sacramento, CA
• 10/10: Santa Clarita Valley Quilt Guild, Santa Clarita, CA
• 10/29: International Quilt Festival, Houston, TX

Speaking of happiness, my black & white pooches, Panda and Callie, were happy to model with this colorful new finish!