Orange Crush {Completed Quilt}

I have to admit that I really have a serious crush on this quilt. For whatever reason, orange has been the color of the summer for me. Because I kept finding myself drawn to orange, I decided to really go for it and create an ombre gradient quilt to show off the vibrant color. I chose to follow a tutorial from Leanne @ she can quilt: Blended Scraps Tutorial to make the quilt top. The tutorial is well written and I was piecing and making a lot of progress very quickly. I took a bit of time getting back to finishing this quilt because of other projects, but when I did, I decided to add a simple border out of Kona Bone to help frame the quilt. I am really glad I went with the border.

Orange Crush

If you have been following along with my progress, you know that I ran into some difficulties with dropping stitches while I was working on the quilting. I finally decided to abandon the thread I had selected for the quilting, and I changed to lighter weight (50wt) thread for the top and bottom of the quilt. This did not completely resolve all my problems, but it was much improved.

I really like how the quilted spirals interlock and weave together to create a bit of softness around the brilliant, crisp orange hues and stark diamond pattern created by the design. My husband likes that he can trace along one spiral and then jump to another spiral and meander around the whole quilt organically by tracing different connecting lines.

Orange Crush {Backing}

I might just love the backing on this quilt more than the top. I really love its simplicity, and there is enough orange there to provide interest and remind me what the quilt is really all about (orange!). It is amazing how a solid can really make quilting designs pop. From this view, the quilting reminds me of a gentle spring rain on a calm lake – lots of rain drop ripples branching out and touching each other.

Orange Crush {Quilting Detail}

I quilted meandering loops around the Kona Bone border of the quilt, and the binding is a batik that blends from the lightest shades of orange found in the quilt to the darkest. I really like binding quilts with batiks; they create very crisp corners and are easy to hand stitch down on the back.

Orange Crush {Quilting Detail}

If you look closely at the quilting detail in the photo above, you can see one of my lazy approaches to dealing with a particularly long stretch of dropped stitches. I simply doubled back and then continued forward. Effective? Yes. Attractive… not so much. This was in an area with my original thread choices. Thankfully, while I still had a dropped stitch or two after the thread change, at least the length of the areas with dropped stitches reduced significantly.

Orange Crush

In all, I spent 10 hours quilting Orange Crush. For me, that is a very long time! The quilt took 28 hours in total from design to final stitch.

Orange Crush

More fun statistics:

• Flimsy Finish: 62.75″ x 62.75″
• After Quilting / Squaring / Binding: 61″ x 61″ (just under 3% shrinkage from the original flimsy finish size)
• After First Wash: 57″ x 57″ (~9% shrinkage from the original flimsy finish size!)

For the full background and history of this quilt, you can check out my earlier blog posts about Orange Crush here:

• Orange Crush
• Orange Crush – More Piecing
• Orange Crush {Backing}
• Orange Crush {Dropped Stitches Blues}