Space Crystal Quilt Finished!

I made this quilt for the LOVE challenge for Jeff. I think this might be the fastest quilt I've made, start to finish!

I machine quilted this myself—my first—and also probably my last. I didn't like doing it. At least not with my current sewing machine. It was quite a job shifting this quilt around to change sewing direction. But, I did want to get this finished by Valentine's Day and if I sent it out for quilting I wouldn't have it done now.

For folks who also want to make this quilt design, it appeared in ABC 3-D, Tumbling Blocks and More by Marci Baker. The pattern turned out to be much easier than it looked; everything is strip pieced. The real challenge is cutting all the odd-shaped pieces; for that, you NEED a triangle ruler. I bought mine from Fabric Depot which looks like they have them on sale right now.

The instructions were a slight challenge in that they referred to all the fabric colors as light, medium or dark and you had to figure out from the context which color group they meant. And I managed to get a couple pieces switched around in the sewing, which I went back and fixed. But overall, I pieced the quilt in just a couple of days. I recommend working on just one hex at a time.

The instructions called for a rectangular shape for the finish, but my husband wanted the hex shape. I was a little intimidated about finishing the binding because I wasn't sure how to deal with the 120° angles. But then I found this blog post, and it helped me work up the courage to finish. I think it went pretty well.

Now, as far as stashbusting, this quilt used (by adding up the strip measurements) just over 4 yards of quilting cotton. No scraps in this one, except if you count the batting. That was a remnant leftover from one of my big quilts. I had to piece it and everything.

For this year, I am just under 15 yards on my 30 yard pledge. Perhaps my pledge was too low, but really once the weather gets nice, I'll have to start working outside. This fun time in my sewing room won't last much longer.