Supernova Quilt Along

Lee at Freshly Pieced began her "Supernova" quilt along (see button at right) two weeks ago, and I've been scurrying to keep up. Being away from home causes that!

Before the quilt along started, I shopped. I bought 11 fat quarters, mostly "Central Park" by Kate Spain, and filled in with pieces from my stash. Each of the nine blocks in Supernova uses five to seven fabrics. As Lee suggested, I spent some time arranging 3"-wide strips for each block, and took photos of each block. Then, using Picasa, I created a collage rotating and arranging blocks until I liked what I saw. This now my printed reference for cutting my fabrics.

 

Here are the cut pieces for each block.

Using a solid in a quilt and the color gray?! That's out of the ordinary for me. Supernova could change my life!

I had to place an on-line order the solid background fabric online because our two local shops sell only a few solid colors. I purchased two shades of gray, and auditioned both of them before settling on Kaufman charcoal.

Here are a few of the blocks as they're on my design wall.

If you've noted the little markers, that's how I keep track of where the block is positioned in the layout. Just like an Excel spreadsheet, rows are horizontal and numbered; columns are vertical and alphabetized.

I figure each four-patch block took about an hour to sew, so this represents at least nine hours of piecing. I was fussy about getting the diagonal seams to join precisely. Of course, that involved some unsewing and resewing. 

On Thursday, Lee released the third step of the Supernova Quilt Along, so it's back to work for me. Thankfully, it's fun work. As I'm sewing I'm thinking about how I will quilt this. Gosh, I'm looking forward to doing some sit-down quilting again. It's been too long. Linda