light and lovely crossroads blocks

the low-volume crossroads quilt is nearly complete.

as much as i enjoy making these blocks one or two at a time, i got a sudden desire to finish this particular top. i do enjoy them as one-off projects, but chain piecing a bunch at once is also quite satisfying.

this castle pennant block is one of my favorites from the final batch. i had a few leftover pieces of this heather ross rapunzel print from when i made my fall paint lake quilt. the bright pink pennants on top of the towers didn't fit well in the color scheme of that quilt, so i trimmed them out at the time. there were enough of these trimmed pieces to make a block for this quilt, where they fit wonderfully. i was unsure about not including rapunzel in the block, but i think it works very nicely as is.

snack break - carrots and hummus

these were ( i thought ) the final 12 blocks i made. however, when i started to lay the top out, i realized i had my numbers off - the quilt needed 56, not 52, blocks. so i made the last four then got this top joined up:

i like all the blocks individually in this quilt and am pretty happy with much of how it turned out. however, in retrospect, i would currate my fabric choices a little more carefully. there are lots of very pretty, soft florals in this top, as well as many novelty-type prints. some of these blend really well and some don't fit as nicely. i sort of wish i had done all one or the other type. but it's done now and is what it is. it's still a pretty lovely quilt.

that princess and the pea print (all the bright vertical citrus stripes) looked low-volume as a whole print, but because i included large portions of the stacked mattresses, it makes for a much more color dense block than the rest of the quilt. i almost pulled it and used it for my yellow crossroads quilt instead, but just left it. there were some other more relatively medium-volume prints also in the quilt, and whenever i tried to remove one, it made the others stand out even more. so i just left them all the way they were and sewed that top together.

honestly, i don't love it as much as i thought i would. but that's okay! i learned a bit more about fabric selection and my personal tastes. also, go ahead and pull the blocks that aren't working for you. i could have always put them on the back or something.

i got this project and a few others backed and basted, and am working on quilting a whole batch of them now. i looked at several other crossroads quilts on instagram for ideas of how to quilt it, and settled on echo quilting the block joining seams and the outsides of the road strips. i used a bright coral pink thread, although i'm not sure why now. subtle was supposed to be the order of this quilt.

here's a peek at the backing and how the quilting worked out. a good wash and some quilt crinkle will hide the flaws, right? 

why are straight lines so hard sometimes?