Roller Rink ~ finished

It's been almost exactly two months since I unrolled and sorted my Comma jelly roll, and finally we have a finished quilt.  For some reason this quilt seemed much more time intensive than some of the others I've made (even though really it didn't take any longer!).  Maybe it's that I had in mind that jelly roll = quick & easy, and because of that it didn't come together as fast as I thought it would.  All that said, totally happy and satisfied with this project now that it's done.  Pictures...

 

At first I had in mind to make something based on the project in the book, maybe a section of blocks and then wide borders of negative space, but in the end I went with the pattern as written and increased the number of blocks from 65 to 85.  In our family, a bigger quilt is always better than a too-small quilt!

A very windy day for taking photos outside!

The overall geometric quilting design that I used (ahem...finally got up the guts to try...) was great!  It seems like a pretty forgiving design and one that makes it pretty difficult to get stuck or work your way into a corner.  I started in the middle of the quilt and the nature of the design sort of caused my quilting to proceed in rows.  This was okay, but I had a few instances of almost puckers on the back when quilting towards an already quilted section, and honestly I'm not sure how to avoid this entirely.  Once I realized what was happening I was more conscious about not quilting too close to an already quilted section - the areas where I came within 1/4" or so of previous quilting were where the puckers almost happened, and if I kept it to 1" or so away then the problem was a lot less.  I find this tricky since I can't always see exactly where I'm going, but it's a learning process!

For the backing I used a tone on tone black print, incorporating my leftover strips of Comma to make it just a little bit more interesting.

One final note about this project - for the second time, I used a 100% bamboo batting.  Last time I did, I found that the quilt shrunk a lot, about 4" in each direction.  That was not something that I ever really took note of before but in this case I made careful note of before quilting, after quilting, and after washing/drying dimensions.  This one ended up shrinking about 2-3" in each direction.  Maybe this is typical and to be expected, considering none of my materials are pre-washed.  Food for thought.....

Quilt stats:

Finished size:  65" x 77"
Pattern:  Roller Rink, from Modern Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman

Fabric:  Comma by Zen Chic for Moda, Kona Steel, Kona Iron, tone on tone 'quilting blender' from Fabricland (backing), green print from Ooh La La by Henry Glass (binding)

Quilted by:  me, using Aurifil 50wt cotton thread #2610 in the pattern 'geometric overall' from "Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters"

Linking to Finish it up Friday @ Crazy Mom Quilts