feelin' groovy

 Long, long ago, I pieced this patchwork. Then I folded it up and put it on a shelf. I wasn't sure how I wanted to quilt it. I wasn't sure about a backing fabric. I just wasn't sure.

A year or two later, I pulled the pieced top out of the cupboard and added a wide, dark brown border. It seemed like the right color. Many of the fabrics were etched in dark brown. But something didn't feel right. I wasn't sure what it was, but something just didn't work. 

Time did what time does and then, rather suddenly, a few weeks ago, I pulled the pieced top out of the cupboard and put it on my design wall, AKA the floor. Poor little patchwork. Maybe it wasn't the color of the border, but the width that was wrong. My husband, AKA a valuable second opinion, agreed. The brown border was 'completely overpowering.' Quick as a blink, before I could reconsider, I sliced off four and a half inches all round. The border was now the same width as the blocks making up the pattern. Blissful harmony. 

The beauty of slicing fabric from the border meant I also suddenly had fabric for a matching binding. Double happiness.

I wanted straight line quilting but I also wanted all the borders to look the same. Not little, bitty, short lines one direction and great, long, quilt length ones the other.  What to do. Hmmmm. Diagonal! That was the answer. It's pretty fun to quilt a square quilt on the diagonal. You start with the shortest line imaginable. And the lines get longer and longer and longer and longer and then shorter and shorter and shorter and presto, yahoo, you are done! 

I love this quilt. I love the colors(so 1960's) and the pattern(so mesmerizing) and the quilting(so modern) and the backing. (vintage Ikea) Long, long ago, my mother named it Pieces of Eight after pirate gold and that is an awesome name. Can a quilt have two names? No? Yes? Well, I am also thinking of this one as Feelin' Groovy.