Spring Training Quilt

Ta da! This is the Spring Training quilt, my entry for this year’s Michael Miller Hash Dot Fabric Challenge. It features all four of the fabrics required by the challenge — Hash Dot in turquoise, lime green, and black/white, plus Cotton Couture peach solid. The only thing I added to the mix was Cotton Couture white, which I think was essential to provide additional contrast and give the eye a place to rest.

This design began several months ago as a simple two color quilt. Each “column” featured both colors, with a 45-degree angle join located fairly randomly. I was intrigued by the odd shapes that formed, but knew it needed more. As the Astros made their way through the baseball postseason, I sat doodling on my couch and hit upon the idea of layering skinnier strips with angled ends on top of that base layer. I liked what I saw, and that’s also the point at which I realized this could be a good design for the Hash Dot fabric challenge, so I recolored everything using approximations of the challenge fabrics. (My original doodles were in different colors.)

From my Procreate sketches, I then went to Illustrator to draw up something more precise and figure out all my measurements. Each strip was a little different, but overall construction really isn’t too complicated. The trickiest part was just making sure each angle went the direction I planned!

You can see above that my first iteration had all the skinny strips as peach, but then once I got into Illustrator I made the decision to alternate them with white. That was definitely a good call, I think! I also threw in a couple strips of the lime green fabric. Although the challenge only required two of the hash dots plus the peach, I feel like I’m not fully embracing the spirit of the challenge if I don’t use them all in some way!

(Also, I just realized that I photographed the quilt rotated 180 degrees from my Illustrator mockup, which is funny. It really doesn’t matter which side is up or down as long as the stripes run vertically!)

I did the quilting — straight lines spaced 1″ apart, using Aurifil 50 wt white thread — on my Juki with my walking foot. I had a misguided first attempt in which I got impatient during the basting process and paid for it with puckers all over the backing. After I ripped all that out, rebasted the sandwich, and started over…well, it went perfectly smoothly after that. I thought about going back with another set of lines to have 1/2″ spacing, but I was crunched for time and honestly felt like the 1″ spacing looked pretty good already, so I let it go.

My working title for this quilt was “The Juice Box,” inspired by the juicy peach solid plus a nod to a nickname for Minute Maid Park where the Astros play, since I was sketching while watching them. (I really hated that peach solid at first, but have to admit that it really grew on me as I started piecing this quilt top together.) But when it came time to name the quilt for my QuiltCon submission, I decided to get input from Jose. He thought the design looked like a fence, and the peach made him think of spring. “Spring Training!” he said, to keep the baseball reference. “Perfect!” I said, and thus it had a new name. (Jose named my winning fabric challenge entry last year, so now it’s a tradition!)

The backing could be any Michael Miller fabrics, so I had fun piecing together leftovers from the top, along with three fat quarters from the bundle I received as part of my prize last year. Full circle!

I’m crossing my fingers that it will be juried into the show this year, but even if it’s not, I’m very happy with this design and can see it working in endless combinations of 4-5 colors and/or prints. I’ll be writing up a pattern over the next several week and hope to have it ready by February! 

p.s. I’m doing a 31 day blog writing challenge!