Pink Improvisation with spirals, a new quilt

It began with a few pieces of pink and gray fabric from my last project. I intended to make a more improvised patchwork that stepped away from this year's obsession "the log cabin" block. Improvisational piecing these larger square and rectangle pieces together and using a pale palette was a pleasing variation on the bold colors and repetitious piecing I have been doing with log cabins. Modern quilters call this a "low volume" quilt. I would say it is a low value palette. It is when the colors are of such a pale value that they almost blend together to appear as one. This ends up giving a very pleasing restful appearance in the finished quilt. It's not quite a whole cloth quilt but the use of close values makes the quilting stitches important like they are in a whole cloth quilt. 

I began free hand marking and quilting the spirals on Labor Day. 

The spirals are a departure from my usual straight line rows of quilting.  I like the look of the rings as they go round and round almost like the rings on a still pond when you throw in a hand full of pebbles in, making ripples. 

This quilt has a continuous bias tape made of a bright coral color printed fabric. I found two new prints at Finch Sewing Studio in Leesburg, Va. during a DC Modern Quilt Guild sewing day. The binding and the backing are made out of a fabric line called Winged which recalls butterfly wings in the patterns. I chose a bold color binding to draw out the softer pinks in the low value top. 

working on the last step a coral print bias binding

Throw quilt spread out on the bed showing the hand quilted spirals 

completed hanging on the design wall 

new oval label adds the last detail

It measures about 41" x 66" before washing and drying and is made with a organic cotton and bamboo batting that was light and drapes very nicely. The backing clung to this batting like no other I have used it was clinging just by static attraction.