A Little Bit of Red

Yes. I am finally working again on my Black & White quilt for Jackie's challenge. I got the flimsy finished last night.. Mr Attic helped by holding it high for a picture.
For as long as I can remember I have been wanting to make a tumbling block quilt with 3D optical illusion. And I have to say, even though I do love the outcome, I don't think I'll be making another one soon. Not because it made me cross-eyed looking at it.. but because there are really no straight rows to sew together. Unless you use a quick method and make half diamonds. But I never liked that seam showing.

So to do it without a seam, I sewed three diamonds together to make a hexagon. Then put the hexagons together the same as you would a Grandmother's Garden.. setting in all the seams. One by one.
I had to draw a diagram for myself and number each block so I could keep it all straight while piecing it together. Below is the same picture as above, but I used blogger's picasa to upload it so you can click it bigger if you want..

This morning I hurried to piece a backing together before 10am. We were having a ladies' get together today at the church where anyone could bring a craft or project to work on and eat snacks. So I took advantage of the big space to pin my quilt into a frame for basting.. since I really do not like to crawl around on the floor doing it. And I thought maybe if someone forgot to bring a craft of their own.. or didn't have something to work on.. I could give them a free lesson in quilt basting. No one wanted the free class.. oh well.. their loss.. but lots of people passed by and said.. "Oh how pretty!" I did get one girl to help me roll it under as I went. That was very helpful.. and nice.

So I got it all basted and in the hoop to do some big stitch hand quilting. I am so into this.. and can hardly think of putting a quilt in my big frame and using those tiny little stitches again.

For Jackie's challenge we are to use the basic black and white, and then add one other color. I debated about this for almost a year now. I put every color I could think of next to it, and for some reason I just kept coming back to red. Maybe because when Jackie first introduced the challenge at the beginning of the year, I had just seen a black and white quilt with a tiny bit of red, and that's what made me want to sign up. So red it is.