Weight of Love Quilt

In February, I took the Weight of Love workshop by Libs Elliot. Libs has a very edgy aesthetic and when picking fabric for her class I was torn between a vibrant modern palette or a more sedate contemporary one. In the end I could not resist cutting into the fat quarter bundle of Peppered Cottons by Studio E fabrics that I had purchased. They are just stunning in person and provided much needed color therapy while I was working with them.

I decided to use the entire stack of fabrics rather than limiting the palette to just a few colors. These were my picks. In some cases I mapped 2-3 fabrics for the same color slot. 

Cutting up the hexagons was the easy part. Sewing them together was a slow process with all the Y-seams and it took some perseverance. In retrospect a loose weave shot cotton was perhaps not the right choice for a pattern that required precision cutting and piecing. I had to heavily starch some of the pieces to make them easier to handle. 

Once the top was done I decided to add in a few hexagons as background to complete the top. I had already made up my mind to hand quilt this one with Perle cotton. I used size 8 thread and a good Sashiko needle for this. From previous experience with another hand quilting project I decided not to use Warm and Natural cotton batting as it is really hard on the fingers. Instead I used Hobbs Thermore Ultra Thin Polyster batting. The needle went through like butter. I used about 6 different colors of DMC Perle cotton to quilt this one.

Finally I faced the quilt as I am currently into the no binding look. This is going to be a wall quilt for the most part so facing seemed to fit the bill.

Finishing this quilt has been very satisfying. I am going to miss working on it. Leaving off with a few more pictures.

Linking up to: Quilt Story