Tidy Up Tuesday - Condo Complex Complete

Welcome to another edition of Tidy Up Tuesday!!  I have spent the last week making bits of progress toward finishing one of the two PURPLE mini quilts that I created for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge during August.  As the month drew to a close, SEW did the project.

I shared the beginning of my IMPROV Adventure quilt in THIS edition of Design Floor Friday.

The landscaping updates can be found HERE.

That brings us to the quilting...

LeeAnna suggested matchstick quilting.  Since the piece is modern, I decided to go with that.  The question begged how best to implement that style of close stitching.  What would YOU do???

What I did was sit it on top of the giant pile 'o quilts right next to my "Zoom chair".  This forced me to look at the quilt any number of times during the past week:

Eventually, I determined...

The best course of action would be to start by stitching the landscaping onto the quilt and go from there:

One leaf/bush turned to two...

... And two turned to three:

Once the "bushes" were sewn down, I moved on to quilting the tree:

That left only one piece of shrubbery to be attached...

Then I started in on the final section of the garden design by adding more of the bright green that danced around the quilt.  If you look carefully, you can see that stitching in the foreground.  The rest will wait for (potential) hand stitching, at a later date:

Next came the (actual) quilting...

I drew out a plan:

photo currently unavailable

Unlike with the stitching, this time, I began at the top of the quilt...

Working through the vertical stitching and moving on to the horizontal stitching:

Clouds were added to the sky section:

The final section remaining was the "sun" square:

My inclination was a big, smiley kindergarten sun or quilting in the word "sunshine", but my Design Assistant/DS2 didn't like either of those choices.  His idea would incorporate watery, rippled sun rays, however, in his description I latched onto the word "swirl."

Of course, you KNOW what happened next, don't you???

I exercised my "phone a friend" option and called in my Design Consultant.  Needleb suggested Deborah Boschert-like sun curve/arcs (which I always think of as rainbows) or a rising sun with ripple rays - meaning a half circle at the bottom of the yellow square with ray coming up around it.

Ultimately, I went with a swirly sun with wonky ray up in the top corner to keep that spot as the light source:

Answering the binding vs. facing question, I opted for a facing...

... And later could have kicked myself for being SEW focused on finishing the quilt that I missed out on reading the post from Linda @ Flourishing Palms!  In that post (sitting in my inbox) was the link to a MUCH better method (from WeAllSew) of doing a faced edge:

A quick photo of the completed quilt, hanging on the Gallery Wire at 10 PM.  Oops!!  Perhaps, I was in a hurry?  I didn't even bother with extra clips to make sure it hung straight:

The colors are better in this photo taken in the light of day:

13" wide x 17" tall

I'm pretty sure this qualifies as a DrEAMI project, so I'll link up with Sandra @ Mmm... Quilts.  Since the design is fresh and modern, I will join in with Kelly @ My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday.  Let's not forget Cynthia @ Quilting is more fun than Housework.  I'm ridiculously pleased with this scrappy project and will be sharing it next Sunday for Oh Scrap!

Last, but not least, I want to thank Deb @ A Quilter's Table for inspiring me to make this quilt in the first place.  I knew that I wanted to make a scrappy quilt using pieces of purple from this basket:

Until I looked back at the post linked above, I had no idea what I wanted to make.  Once I saw her little quilt, I couldn't stop myself.  Too bad you can't tell that I took even ONE piece of fabric out of my PURPLE scrap basket, let alone ALL of the pieces for my new mini!!!

Oh well, at least I had a really good time.  :o))

I also shared this with Alycia

for

Finished (Or Not) Friday

and

Andree invited me to join in

for

Free Motion Mavericks

Until next time...

Make MORE quilts!!!