Finishing UFOs: Fruit Swirl

When this past week presented some downtime from teaching and meetings, I decided to get a jumpstart on tackling a few UFOs before the end of the year. The first step was updating my list of UFOs and pulling them out from their various hiding spaces. The more I looked around my studio and storage space, the more that I found...and I still have 1-2 drawers to go through that are likely to contain a few more. 

Here is a stack of quilts that need quilting. As you can see, one already had a bit of quilting so that seemed like a great starting point for making progress on my UFOs.

Do those fruity fabrics look familiar?!? They are from Michael Miller's Sew Fruity fabric collection, the same collection I used to create Carmen Miranda's Mandala while serving as a 2019 and 2020 Michael Miller Brand Ambassador.

Fabrics featured in this post were provided by Michael Miller Fabrics during my term as an 2019/2020 Brand Ambassador

As a Brand Ambassador, we plan our projects based on provided digital images of the fabrics without seeing how it is repeated from selvedge to selvedge. So for my mandala design, I played it safe by requesting 8 repeats of the print. When it arrived, I was able to source 8+ repeats of each fruity shape within the first 3-4 repeats, meaning there were 4 full repeats remaining. This seemed the perfect opportunity for making a stack and whack quilt as a bonus project. 

I carefully cut along each repeat and used pins to align and layer the four repoeats using a process I outlined while making a previous Michael Miller project: Lost in Paradise. The 12-12.5" repeat was subcut into 4" strips and then into 4" squares of identical sections of the printed design.

Using squares means four different kaleidoscopic design possibilites depending on which edge you rotate into the center. Below are four different block layouts using the same repeat squares. I had a lot of fun rotating the blocks to explore all four layouts, sometimes struggling to choose which was my favorite as they all looked great. Which is your favorite of the layouts below?!?

Once a layout was chosen, it was a matter of sewing simple 4-patches together, yielding 30 fun blocks!!

Now it was time to decide on a quilt layout. I briefly explored adding sashing strips using two differnet Michael Miller basics: Gingham Play and Garden Pindots.

In the end, I opted for a 5x5 layout in the center, surrounded by borders cut from the companion border print using four leftover blocks for the corners. One block was ultimately cut out...can you spot which one? 

I explored orienting the border strips with the white or navy background facing into the center making for another difficult design decision!  

Here's is Panda modeling with the finished quilt top...
 

Remaining yardage from the border print was pieced together into a quilt backing and I managed to quilt the center blocks and one border before I had to hit pause on this project in August 2019. Other deadlines took priority so this was tucked away with the other UFOs for more than 2 years...

The center was stitched with an all over meander of spirals, surrounded by scallops which were echoed before moving onto the next spiral.

As it had been 2+ years since I quilted the first border, I needed to refamiliarize myself with the quiltng for the border as well as the center design which I stitched in the four corner blocks. For the borders, I outlined each fruit and added a bit of stitched textures into some of the larger fruits: orange/lemon segments, pineapple squares, etc. Each border took quite a bit of time and that is probably why this quilt was temporarily banished to the UFO pile. While tackling the last 3 borders, I totally skipped the cantaloupes and didn't realize this error until the quilt was already trimmed and bound, but it was easy to go back and quilt those last 5 cantaloupes with a bit of loop de loop meander to recreate the cantaloupe texture. 

Michael Miller's Cherry Gingham Play print made for the perfect binding, which I cut on a bias!

This labeled and bound quilt is officially Ta-Done!!

"Fruit Swirl" 48" x 48"

Now that all my UFOs have been dug out from their respective hiding spaces, I hope to tackle at least 3-4 more before the end of the year. Wish me luck!! How many UFOs are on your list to finish before the end of the year?!? Maybe we can cheer each other on between now and December 31st!?!