Project Quilting 15.6: Irish Chain

 

This week's Project Quilting challenge 15.6 theme kicked off on St. Patrick's Day so the Irish Chain was chosen, inviting participants to start and finish a quilt that is inspired by the traditional Irish Chain quilt design.

I knew I wanted to blockprint some portion of the Irish Chain design. Earlier in the week, I revisited a few of my sunflower themed hand-carved blocks and Fabmo fabrics to create a mock-up design which needed more than a week's time to percolate. Saturday afternoon, inspiration (or perhaps last minute panic) finally struck. I started by sketching a simple 9-patch block design but since I wasn't planning on piecing it, I drafted a more intricate 9-patch design featuring curves, which often is dubbed the Glorified Nine Patch. 

I printed and photocopied a mastersheet to explore different block combinations--many of which featured floral designs as I strove for a garden lattice design. 

I narrowed it down to these these two flowers that I test printed:

• Left: an Art Nouveau Mackintosh Rose aka Glasgow Rose 
• Right: a Notan-inspired abstract flower

As I did not have any red fabric ink on hand, I opted for the Notan abstract flower which would look fabulous printed with the blue/teal fabric inkpads I did have! Note that red inkpads have been ordered and should arrive this week!

In the end, I opted to print with black ink onto some green, teal, and silver fabric swatches that all coordinated with this lustrous stripe--all of which I picked up the day before from Fabmo in the Priceless Treasures Room--where everything has no price as it's all free! 

Once the printing was complete, they were heatset with a hot dry iron. As these were fairly slinky woven fabrics, I opted to fuse Pellon SF101 Stacy Shapeflex Woven stabilizer onto the backside.

With the blockprints stabilized, I could easily trim each with 1/4" seam allowance and trust that the blocks would hold their square shape and size.

As these were fairly small fabric swatches, I planned to do a bit of piecing and played with a few different block layouts for the 4-patch prints:

1. Left - Alternating checkerboard/postage stamp
2. Middle - Glorified Nine-Patches oriented towards the center which I liked
3. Right - Notan flower oriented towards the center

Initially I chose option #2 while laying out all the blocks...but switched to option #3 last minute as I was at my sewing machine and ready to stitch them together.

Once the blocks were assembled into 4-patch blocks (or would you consider these 16-patch blocks?), I auditioned quite a few fabrics for the alternating background blocks. Many of these fabrics distracted from the printed blocks--and alas even the beautiful stripe that inspired the printed blocks' color palette did not make it into the final quilt's layout (I am considering using it for the quilt sleeve--but think it is too pretty for a quilt sleeve!)

While these grey stripes did not detract, they were a bit too boring for such a big space...they were cut in half and auditions began for complementary fabrics. As this was an Irish Chain, I drew inspiration from Ireland's tricolored flag: green, white and Orange! Of course this then required me to choose whether to orient the light grey stripes or orange print towards the center block!

In case you are wondering which option I chose--below is the center of the finished quilt. The quilting was kept fairly simple starting with stitching in the ditch followed by free-motion quilting which I managed to complete in one pass with minimal travel stitching!

Once trimmed, I finished with a faced edge. In less than 12 hours start to finish, including writing this blog post, I introduce to you...Irish Daisy Chain.

Irish Daisy Chain, Finishes 23" x 23"

Thanks again to Project Quilting challenge hosts, Kim Lapacek and Trisha Frankland for another fun challenge theme! Be sure to check out all the incredible Irish Chain inspired quilts started and finished this past week!