Quilt Evolution

Once ‘Round the Country is a round robin quilting bee with 5 members who were in Snip.Sew.Send. together.  This month’s center block came from Zonnah of Zonnah’s Addictions.

Her center block was made of the kind of intricate tiny piecing that she does so well . . .

Zonnah's photo of her tiny piecing

which resulted in a center block that looked like this:

Zonnah's center block

The block went to Adrienne, of Hermione J. Schwartz, who was the first to face the daunting challenge of adding a border that would complement, but not detract from Zonnah’s center block.  Adrienne added a simple border with cool toned fabrics to allow a visual rest between the tiny details and the next rounds to come.

Round 2

Then, the block came to me.  Many options for adding to the borders were considered and then promptly discarded.  Finding the right balance between a scale that worked with the center block but not overpowering it proved difficult.  There were moments when it was tempting to email Zonnah and ask if she wanted to just keep this as a mini art quilt, but then I happened upon Carol Doak’s website and found the solution there.  It was one of her free patterns called Celebration Wreath and it looked like it just might work.

Round 3

It is a paper piecing pattern that consists of 20 blocks with 13 pieces each that were designed to join together around a center block.  The pattern was designed to go around an 8 inch block, so needed to be re-drawn to fit the scale of what Zonnah and Adrienne had done.  Sewing it together led to a bit of insecurity about the end result.  Would the scale be too large?  Would it focus the eye toward Zonnah’s block?  Would too much fabric be used up?

In the end, I think it worked.  The size of the quilt top has increased pretty significantly, but there is still plenty of fabric left.  And now the quilt top will head on it’s way for the next border to be added on.

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