Quilt Reveal: Tropical Fish Quilt

 

I started this Tropical Fish quilt for the July blog hop, but I wasn't able to finish it before my post date. Since then, I have finished quilting and binding it, and it is now ready for its grand reveal.

The fish is made with free cut applique pieces, made out of fabric scraps from some of my other projects. I used school glue instead of fusible to secure it. I combined stitching down the applique pieces with the quilting. 

I surrounded the fish with half square triangles. I could have used scraps for this part, but I was eager to cut into my bright and colorful fabric. I used the two at a time method to make the half square triangles. I cut the squares larger so I didn't have to deal with eighths, but didn't bother to trim the blocks. Instead of making the center panel fit the size of the blocks, I made the borders first, and then cut the center panel the size of the blocks.

It was fun to make this quilt with the colorful fabric and the free motion quilting.

I wound up with four hours of video, even though I didn't video each step, like the binding. I was able to reduce it down to a more reasonable size by cutting out lots of it, and speeding some of it to 400%. Speeding the video caused my editing program to crash several times, and I had to break down the video into two pieces to get it to work without crashing.

I am getting pretty good with finding workarounds to problems and am enjoying the editing process.

According to my spreadsheet, I have finished 160 quilts in my lifetime. I still have to work on finishing more quilts than I started, but I have finished a lot of quilts this year.

Linked with:

Wednesday Wait Loss

Patchwork and Quilts Link Party

Off The Wall Friday

Tropical Fish

 

Welcome to my Blog Hop Day! The theme for the blog hop is  hosted by Carol Swift from Just Let Me Quilt.

The July blog hop, "Something Smells Fishy", started Monday!

This challenge immediately thought of going to the beach in a tropical location. I reached for all the bright and colorful fabrics that made me think of the beach vacation. 

I decided to make a quilt that was both pieced and applique. I immediately had the idea and didn't go through a lot of different ideas like I sometimes do for these blog hops. I ran with the first idea I had.

I first pieced the border triangles and then based on that size, added the center fabric that will serve for the background for the fish.  

I then made a crazy tropical fish which will probably show you how little I know about fish anatomy.

I chose the backing fabric, and have cut the backing and backing fabric to size. 

I will show you the finished quilt as soon as it is finished.

Thank you for joining me on this blog hop. I posted a list of the other participants in the blog hop, so be sure to visit them to see more fishy projects!