Slice of Pi Quilts: Round Robin

Sunday, July 31, 2016

In January, my best quilty friend, Heather, and I started a Round Robin quilt. Now, just over seven months later, we both have finished quilts!

Red and aqua string star round robin quilt

Aqua and purple feather round robin quilt

Do you remember how it worked? We set some rules (that we I often broke) and each started by making a center block. Then we mailed the block to the other person to add a border. Then switched two more times to add another border each round. We then gave ourselves ~~two~~ three months to finish the quilts. (Read about the previous rounds here: Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, and Round 4.)

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Let's look back at how Heather's quilt came to be!

Heather really felt that the quilt did not need anything more added to it from a design perspective, but she wanted the quilt large enough to use as a throw.

She decided to add a 10" border to the top and bottom and a 5" border to each side using a light colored print fabric with hints of purple and turquoise.

The back is pieced with purple and gray fabric, and she used a low-loft polyester batting.

To quilt it, she started by hand quilting with turquoise thread around the feathers in the center block. So unexpected - and my favorite part!

Then she used a walking foot to stitch in the ditch to quilt the rest of the quilt.

She finished the quilt with a purple binding. The quilt finished around 68" x 56". A great throw quilt size!

Isn't she beautiful?!

Now let's look at how my quilt came to be!

I had several ideas for borders that I considered adding. However, I decided that none of them would actually make the quilt better. They would just be adding for the sake of adding. So I decided to leave the quilt as is and just "quilt the life into it." Or quilt it to death. Or spend hours upon hours sitting at my sewing machine.

I pieced a back using red fabric and various aqua scraps. I used a low-loft polyester batting.

I used my walking foot to quilt parts of it, but also used my darning foot to free motion quilt other parts. All quilting was done on my Bernina Record 930.

I used the same red fabric for the binding that is on the back. The quilt finished at 48" x 48".

Each of our quilts traveled 2,532 miles (assuming the USPS took the most direct route - HA!), we each tried several things we had never done before, and we each have a quilt that symbolizes a friendship that started in college and has grown stronger because of quilting.