Splash of Color QAL

I don't normally do quilt alongs (QALs) for a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm impatient. If I like a quilt, I want to keep working on it. Making a few blocks and then setting it aside for the next step in several weeks makes my teeth itch. Secondly, I'm squeezed for space and don't have much room to have something in progress like that. And third, I'm ornery and chafe against anyone else's schedule.

So when I saw several folks making black and white quilts for the Splash of Color QAL over at Myra's Busy Hands, I thought, "Oh, lots of pretty quilt ideas, but I don't do QALs." End of thoughts.

Except those thoughts didn't go away. I kept looking at my small stash of black and white fabrics and thinking, "Hm, someday." And I had this cute, lurid panel of cats that I had already cut apart and all the pieces were floating around and getting in my way. And I noticed that among the EXTREMELY BRIGHT orange, pink, blue and green cats were touches of black and white. Hm. And while looking for a pattern to use with some woven plaids and stripes, I stumbled across this free pattern called "Juxtaposition." And suddenly I wanted to make those rectangular blocks in black and white with a vertical stripe of brights, and surround the cats with them.

So yesterday, I did. It wasn't so much as a quilt along (QAL), as a quilt all at once (QAAO.) Pretty squirrelly. And I'll admit that my "splash" of color is, um, rather large. Like the kind of splash that a kid makes jumping off the diving board and yelling, "Cannonball!" So I'm calling this piece Cat Cannonball. I also tried a new technique, adding a small flange of black around the panel pieces to set them off a bit. We'll see how that works out during the quilting.

In other, but also lurid, news, Weirdly Whimsical is washed and crinkly. 

I'm happy to report that the linen pieces on the front are nice and soft and shrank at about the same rate as the cottons. This was also the first time I washed the donated yellow plaid backing and it also did really well in the crinkly softness department.

And lastly, the Home Depot Quilt is an unwashed finish.

All the fabrics are bricks and stones and it looks like the outdoor paving department at Home Depot to me. I quilted it with my walking foot in straight lines that parallel the black "pathways." The binding is the same black fabric with a tiny dark gray spot.

The backing is another piece of the fabric that was donated by Sean's aunt. It's not quite as bright red as this photo shows, but more of a brick red that looks great with the front. The sun was very low in these pictures, casting a golden glow on everything. This quilt doesn't have a home yet and keeps whispering gently in my ear that I should hold onto it for a while. 

We've been in Jacksonville for about a week now, and are now getting ready to continue heading south. We anchored in the river for the first couple of nights, and it was very peaceful and calm for being right downtown.

Linking up with Sandra's DrEAMi! (Drop Everything and Make It!) and Myra's Splash of Color for finished flimsies.