Double Decker Checker Quilt

This quilt spent the last couple weeks hanging about 30 miles away from my house at the International Quilt Festival downtown — so it’s about time I shared it here on the blog! This is Double Decker Checker, a quilt I started in late 2023 and finished in spring 2024.

One of the challenges for QuiltCon 2024 was scrap quilts, and I started this one with the intention of it being a last-minute entry for that show. I had been playing around in Adobe Illustrator with traditional blocks combined with careful fabric color/value placement, and loved how I could create a two-layered checkerboard created using the Washington’s Puzzle block. I pulled out my scrap bins and got to work with every bit of blue/green and low volume/white/gray fabric I could find. I don’t think I repeated a single fabric, and if my count is correct that means there are 216 different fabrics in this quilt!

I finished the center blocks and put them all together…and then thought “hmm, I think this would look better with a border.” You can see my extremely polished mockup (lol) of this concept below, which was enough to make me decide to go for it. So I made another ~40 blocks to essentially “frame” the smaller/inner checkerboard.

I had started this quilt only 2 weeks before the QuiltCon deadline, and at this point I had less than a week left. I loaded the top onto my longarm and then? Well, with about 5 days to go and a bunch of end-of-October activities, I realized it just wasn’t gonna happen.

I gave myself permission to let go of the QuiltCon deadline, and finished the quilting over the next week or two. Fun fact #1: I quilted diagonal straight lines which actually create a THIRD checkerboard if you look closely enough. And fun fact #2: this was the last thing I quilted on my old HQ Avante before upgrading to my current longarm!

After quilting, this one sat for a few months and I finally stitched on the binding in spring 2024. Last fall I submitted this quilt for QuiltCon in the Modern Traditionalism category, but it wasn’t accepted. I’ve already submitted it again this year so we’ll see if I have better luck with a different jury. I suspect it may be a bit *too* traditional for QuiltCon, which makes me even happier that it found a spot at Quilt Festival this year!

The stats:

• Quilt measures 66″ x 72″.
• Fabrics and binding are 200+ different fabrics from my stash!
• Backing is Widescreen by Carolyn Friedlander.
• Batting is unknown — apparently I didn’t write it down.
• Pieced with Aurifil 50 wt thread in dove.
• Quilted on my Handiquilter Avante with Aurifil 40/3 thread in white.