I can't even tell you how long ago this finish was started. It must have been several years, at least. But in early December 2014, it was finished!
As I dimly recall, this "quilt" was started by just having lovely pieces of fabric near each other and the uncontrollable urge to sew them together. I remember that these were sewn together long ago with no real plan. And I remember later forming a plan to make an insanely long quilted strip of pieces like these. That plan never came into fruition, and the top for this mat was left to the WIP bin. After being bagged, un-bagged, tossed around, etc... It eventually made it's way to a chair top for many months where Flounder became quite taken with it.
A few months ago, I cleaned it up, tried to get as much of the cat hair off of it as I could, made a back for it, and basted it. Then it sat in a new WIP pile, for a few weeks, and was later quilted while my friend was in town.
I had been looking for a project to do a fan style quilting on and this was perfect. Having never used a fan design, I was worried it might be hard, or slow, so starting with something small was great! The quilting actually went surprisingly fast. I used acrylic black thread for quilting the fan designs, and I think that made a difference. Acrylic really glides thru the quilt as opposed to natural thread, whcih sometimes get caught or travel slowly. The hardest part of quilting this quilt was that some of the fabric is quite dark and made it hard to see the stitching while sewing.
The fabrics in this quilted mat are mostly new from various fat quarters, but there are also some recycled clothes and a bit of vintage. I pieced the back with most black, some old but not vintage stars, and a bit of vintage purple which was also a backing on another quilt. The batting was also a left over scrap. Since my quilts are never any particular size, and certainly not a standard size, I seem to always have batting scraps laying about. I folded over the backing to make the binding but only did one line of stitching, where I usually do two. This is partly laziness on my part, but also I envision this quilt to be super soft and easy to fold, roll, and carry.
This mat quilt is approximately 50" x 22", Which is a pretty weird shape for a quilt. I see this quilt being small and portable and taken where ever you go. It can be used as a mat for yoga or exercise, taken to the park or beach and used as a seat, folded as a chair mat or to give you a little extra back support, laid out for a cat or baby mat. It could also be used as a table/dresser topper or bed runner, but I picture it being more versatile and utilized. It's really soft and a little puffy. I really love the way the fans are very clear and noticeable even though sometimes they are black on black.
I still have to label this quilt and write up it's entry in my quilt journal. But it was very satisfying to finish such an old WIP!! It definitely made me get out my unfinished works and assess them for potential finishes! It was also nice that this quilt had some firsts: First oddly shaped finished quilt and first fan quilting design.
I'm linking this post up with Kathey's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.