Range Quilt

Another month, another quilt!  The finish of this quilt crept over into September, but only hand-stitching the final binding and the photographing was done in September so I'm still going to call that a win.  The Range quilt was one I knew I had to make as soon as I saw the pattern by Modern Handcraft!

As far as things go, this quilt was pretty speedy.  I bought the pattern in November of last year, then spent a bunch of time determining the color spectrum I wanted to use in April of this year and bought the fabric (all Kona solids).  My goal was to make it look like a mountain sunset.

Then I spent two evenings in August stitching it up.  I decided to take the time to do the math and cut each color wedge as a single piece instead of doing the smaller wedges and rectangles the pattern called for and I'm happy with the result - fewer seam lines and a faster sew.  I glued my template to the cardboard from a cereal box and then used my add-a-quarter ruler to cut a straight line (I slid the template over to match the edge after cutting) and it worked like a charm!

Next was a trip to my local quilt store to buy the backing fabric.  My plan was to do a single fabric for the back, but when I got home I realized I was about a half-yard short - oops!  So I used the scraps I had from the front of the quilt to build a skinny "mini range" up the back.  Amazingly, they were exactly the right height for my backing.  My husband calls my backings with a stripe my signature style so it's just par for the course.  The brown I used to set it off was a piece I had stashed; I had just enough to frame this stripe and bind the quilt.

Next, the quilting.  I decided that I wanted to add interest by doing each color in a different style.  I wanted it to flow up from the rocky hills at the bottom to the wind in the sky above the mountain.  I also used a different thread for each section.  The threads were all from my stash and I just put them in order to match the colors on my quilt.  I didn't worry if they matched perfectly - I wanted the quilting to show!

I'm so happy with how the quilting turned out!  Here is a shot of all the different motifs I used, starting with the dark red at the bottom and going up to the white at the top!

And, the final result!  My in-laws were game to drive me out into the forest behind their house to get some fun pictures "in the wild" - I can't decide which one I like best so I'm sharing a few!