Holy Sewing Marathon, Batman!

Only because of my serious caffeine addiction, was I able to stick-to-it and finish up the second Batman quilt top this week! To look at them you wouldn't really think that this improvisational style of piecing would take the hours that it does!

Let's just say that I'm a bit done with a grey, yellow and blue color scheme,

 shall we!

 Have I mentioned that I used a quilt in this magazine from 2011 as a jumping off point? (Notice Cindy's selvage pincushions on the front?!)

 The quilt, called Rectangle Blues Quilt, is designed by Alissa Haight Carlton and includes a nice diagram of her block placement. That is the part that I found very helpful in planning out what size to make each block and how to set them all together. Although one of the block measurements was incorrect, it was an easy fix and saved me hours of math, which I'm not too hot at anyway! I ended up adding a 3.5 inch border around the quilt top, both to give the design some "breathing room" as well as stabilize the edges. 

I made one back yesterday and am on my way to Joanne's for more Kona medium grey so that I can piece the second back. I'm hoping to get the quilting done over the weekend.

 The two quilts are twins, but not identical. The one on the right has more "extras" pieced into the frames and background. The background is Kona medium grey. Not having enough of the medium grey for the background of the second quilt, I decided to use several shades of grey to create an ombre look from dark to light. I also tried a little different technique in making the improvisational frames by using scissors to cut the strips rather than my rotary cutter. While making for a little more "wonkiness", the technique also led to a quilt top that doesn't lay quite as flat. Hopefully that problem will "quilt out"!

I'll get back to you on that.

Meanwhile, on with the Sewing Marathon, Batman!

I'm determined to make my end-of-January deadline on these two!